We can answer this quiz by looking at any of the 3 birds, but let’s start with the birds on the fence. Looking at the bird on the right we can see it has a grayish blue bill and it is fairly large (at least compared to some other sparrows like a savannah for example). The color alone eliminates most of the sparrows, but there are a few with grayish bills. Both sitting birds also have very distinct light/dark patterns on their primary feathers. When I was looking at these birds (and more with them) the contrast was very obvious – enough so that when I got home I looked it up in a sparrow book to see if any other sparrow showed the contrast that strongly. I don’t think so, but it really isn’t mentioned very much in the guides. That may because there are much easier things to look for with this bird and 99% of the time you won’t see only the backside.

Let’s move on to the bird in flight. I think this one should be the easiest of the three to ID. Black primaries & secondaries with a white patch flashing on the coverts. The tail is also black, with white tips on most feathers. These characteristics eliminate every sparrow except the correct answer. The tail of a Horned Lark is mostly black, but it is brown down the middle. They also don’t have white tips, but a white outer tail feather. Lark Sparrow has white tipped tail feathers, but it has a lot more white than this bird, plus the tail and wings aren’t black. The Longspur species all show some amount of black & white pattern in the tail, but they aren’t white tipped. They don’t have black wings either. That leaves us only 1 possibility – Lark Buntings.

Lark Buntings are rare in Utah, but they breed (although not every year?) in the far NE corner of the state. They can also be seen during migration, but very rarely. I took this photo south of Wilcox, AZ in November. I probably saw 5000 throughout the day.
     

Other Answers:
     Sage Sparrow - 1
     Lark Sparrow – 1
     Lapland Longspur - 1
     Horned Lark - 1