Saw this bird through binoculars and just briefly.
North Austin: about meadowlark shape (give or take; going by bird book drawings), brown with light tan markings (seemed almost like a salt & pepper pattern; small spots or short lines, thin outlines along feather edges, etc), bright yellow beak. Other than the beak, the rest of the body was just the brown and light tan colors. No yellow breast or anything.
Did it have a sparrow-like beak (short and thick) or a warbler-like beak (thin)? If the former, I would suspect it was one of the sparrows.
Neither, it had a grackle-like beak. Long, medium-thick. Not like a sparrow’s that’s much wider at the head than the tip. And it looked bigger than a sparrow, more the size of a grackle as well.
Howzabout a Sprague’s Pipit?
Hmm, possibly, though the bird I saw had a very bright yellow beak and seemed darker overall (of course, it was in shade).
Ah ha! I think that’s the one!
For an amazing bit of video on starlings, go hereand start watching at 48 minutes.
Yep, that is definitely cool.