The Western Meadowlark (WEME) is 9-1/2" long. The WEME has a yellow breast and belly with a black V-shaped breast band. Upper parts are dark brown with dusky edges. When the bird is flushed it shows a conspicuous patch of white on each side of a short tail and flies with several rapid wingbeats alternating with short glides.

“He is the free spirit, the wild stallion of the sage,” Donald Kroodsma says in compliment to the Sage Thrasher and its repertoire of over 700 song units which it weaves into tireless singing from the darkness before dawn to nightfall.

Like a sentinel, as described by its species name excubitor, Latin for watchman or guard, the Northern Shrike surveys its territory from a low perch on a shrub or post. With precision it hunts using a direct flight toward its prey-a small rodent or another bird-and dispatches it quickly by “pounding its bill into the base or back of the skull and the using its hooked bill severing the spinal cord between the neck vertebrae as falcons do” (Sibley).

The Yellow-breasted Chat is the most unwarbler-like warbler. Ornithologists have debated where it best belongs in the world of birds, but for now it is in the Parulidae, the family of the warblers. Physically it is distinguished from other warblers by its large size and heavy bill.