Birds at Large: Jeep Liberty Commercial

New feature here: Birds at Large. It could also be called Media Birds or Commercial Bird Errors or I Can't Believe It's Not A Real Bird or People Are Stupid and Lazy. BaL is essentially this: as a live my life and interact with the world around me I notice that birds are often misrepresented or presented incorrectly to non-birding public. I want to point out those errors and mock those involved. Cool? Let's get started with this wicked stupid Jeep Liberty commercial:




Around the 30 second mark a pair of birds fly into the Jeep and start singing along with the idiot driver. Notice anything weird about those birds? I do. What do I notice? They aren't a real species of birds. Not in North America, anyway. The commercial was created by hotshot American shop Cutwater, themselves a branch of the terrifyingly-named advertising juggernaut Omnicom. I say this because I presume that the commercial was shot in America and designed for and American audience, thus ruling out the possibility that this freak-bird is a species elsewhere.

So what is it? The crest-feathers are reminiscent of a quail or something, but the body is clearly different. The long, thin body and the small, flat, sharp beak reminds me of something in the lark family. India's Malabar lark (pictured) or a gray, mutant version of the good ol' Horned Lark.
But it ain't neither of those birds. It doesn't exist. So many annoying questions arise: Why wouldn't the people behind the commercial just use a bird that actually exists? Why go to all the trouble of inventing a new bird when you can use any of the perfectly good ones we've already got? There are no answers to these questions except "laziness." It's a dumb commercial, and it's a dumb mistake.