For what it's worth, I was part of Kurt's aforementioned group at Irvine that saw the LeConte's Sparrow around the 12:00 hour. There were two "sightings", the first of which Kurt photographed and later re-evaluated to be a Savannah Sparrow. I'll also concur that the Savannah appeared a bit odd to me, both in shape (shorter tail, even head seemed more like the Ammodramus) and in markings. However, the color, while slightly buffy, was not as orange as expected. I wasn't quite sold at the time, but the lighting and distance wasn't favorable.

The second sighting, observed by myself and at least one other birder (Dan, I believe his name was) was in the reeds to the left, closer to the trail. The bird did fly into the reeds from the open field with Savannahs, and was very obviously orangish, lacking the face markings of the Savannahs. I noticed him in flight with the Savannahs with a smaller size and slightly different shape. Just my two cents, but the orange coloration and lack of face markings stood out like a sore thumb to me, and should remove any doubt to the ID versus some of the aberrant Savannahs that seem to be making things more interesting for all of us out there. Good luck to all those chasing this sparrow!

dcs

David C. Smith

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