Howdy Folks, First, thanks to all those people that replied either here or to me personally. I appreciate your feedback. I've figured out exactly where I went off track on my path of identification. I use the book form of Sibley's 1st edition in the field. There I saw that Spragues Pipet has pale/pink legs and Sibley's illustrations show all ages of Horned Lark with black legs. I took the first trait I found as absolute and excluded Horned Lark as a possibility right from the get-go. That led me astray to the "not-quite-right" Spragues. What really bothers me is that I remember getting real hung up on a juvy Horned Lark last year too! I didn't learn my lesson then, hopefully I won't repeat it next year- but probably will.
So others don't repeat my mistake here are some clues to look for that separate Pipets and Larks. Primary extension is long for Horned, it extends beyond the tertials. Sprague's wing extension ends at or near the tertials. The outer tail feathers are extensively white on the Sprague's and white is thin or hardly noticeable on the Horned Lark. On the tertials, Horned has a white edge then a subterminal black edge. Sprague's tertials are edged in pale buff/white without the black. I also should have picked up on the crouching posture of the bird pictured away from me. Finally, There are 10's of thousands of Horned Larks in Colorado right now and if there are Sprague's Pipets in Colorado right now the number would be less then 10 (I'm speculating here).
Good luck and good birding,
David Wade
Ft Collins, CO
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