Jerry Friedman

By the way, swifts never sit on anything. They can only cling to vertical walls, which they mostly do in hiding.

The long tail with wide gray and black bands and the wings that barely reach the base of the tail make it an accipiter, and the pale eye and white markings on the back make it immature. I'm going for Cooper's because of the good-sized and blocky head, big bill whose upper edge smoothly follows the curve of the forehead, and especially long tail. (But you haven't heard from an expert yet.)

Welcome to Whatbird! The subspecies isn't Red-backed--they breed only in southwest Texas and southern New Mexico and Arizona. Juncos breeding in Colorado are the Gray-headed subspecies, which has a reddish-brown back and in fact looks a lot like the Red-backed.

When I wrote "NOT", I was agreeing with The Bird Nuts that this wasn't an American Pipit, contrary to what I thought.

NOT (I mean, they are always fun to see. Anyway, thanks for the correction, TBN. Incidentally, I have also mistaken Yellow-rumped Warblers for American Pipits, though I figured that one out myself when I blew up the pictures.)

I agree. According to Sibley, Long-eared (which I've seen exactly once) has a vertical black line through the eye.

Definitely American Pipits--always fun to see.

I agree that it's a Cooper's, also because of the graduated tail (good thing Grandpa Gray J got shots of the tail tip), but in the first shot the nape looks dark to me. Maybe I don't know what "nape" means?

On the bright side, eventually you won't be able to hear them any more. I'm in my fifties and I can't.

Now there's an interesting fact! I had no idea such things were even known.

Another sign for Cooper's is that the forehead makes a continuous line with the top of the bill. And the bill is pretty big. Both of those are clearest in the picture in the comments.

Come to think of it, there also seems to be some green feathering on the head. I might change my vote. But I'm far from an expert on these things. If nobody else speaks up here, you might want to ask somewhere else, if you haven't already. And there's always the method of reporting it on eBird and seeing what the reviewer says.

I agree. Horizontally striped back, more black on the head and back than a Ladder-backed.

I think I can see that there's no patagial mark and that the yellow gape goes under the eye, so I like the Ferruginous theory. Also the wings don't seem to have the Red-tail's bulging shape. People have been seeing ferruges at the Bosque del Apache (here in New Mexico) a lot this winter.

Going for... 1. White-throated (yellow lores, bright white throat and malar with sharp dark outlines) 2. American Tree (rufous cap and eyeline, looks unstreaked, I think I can tell the bill is black above and yellowish below)