Lillian's or not?

[Daniel O'Donnell]

Here are two photos of the eastern meadowlark at the northern end of Bud Mielke reservoir taken this morning. This bird looks a little different to me from the bird I photographed on May 29. The cheek looks a little more white and the yellow on the breast seems to extend a little further down and on the side. So could this be the Lillian’s meadowlark that was observed in the same location earlier in May? I’m not good at determining the subtle differences between subspecies, so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan

Dan O'Donnell
dj...@me.com

[Derek Hill]

The yellow malar region indicates Western Meadowlark I thought.

Derek Hill

Loveland

[Nicholas Komar]

The full yellow malar on this bird indicates that it is a western meadowlark. The song should have corroborated that.  The excellent photos you took a few days ago showed just a little yellow extending onto the malar of the Lillian’s. There are plenty of sound files uploaded to eBird for this bird, so I recommend listening to the song to learn the difference. The most significant plumage difference is the amount of white in the tail. Lilian’s has more white but I have not seen that feature documented on the Loveland bird. It would be good if someone could photograph the spread tail and post to eBird. 

Nick Komar

Fort Collins CO

On Jun 2, 2020, at 4:05 PM, Derek Hill <derekt...@hotmail.com> wrote:



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+u...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/73861501-22e6-470e-a2e1-b5ab7aa41191%40googlegroups.com.