On Friday, November 5th, 2021, I went out in the yard for a little birding after a morning of rain and recovery from my Moderna booster that I had gotten two days before. There were a lot of birds in the yard but mostly chickadees (Chestnut-backed and Black-capped), House sparrows and our most numerous winter species, Dark-eyed (Oregon) juncos. Our leucistic Dark-eyed junco did visit the yard later.
I spied (and managed to photograph) a Yellow-rumped warbler flitting around the yard but it never made it down to the watercourse.
I noticed what seemed like a first year White-crowned sparrow in the yard to the side of me, but it seemed to have unusually bold facial markings. I wanted to photograph it but it was moving away from me and was on the far side of a wire fence we use to protect a Japanese maple from the neighborhood’s deer population. I watched it for a minute or so but it moved off out of sight.
About fifteen minutes later the same bird popped out from an evergreen huckleberry beside the watercourse and I quickly focused on it for a photo. As I did so I could clearly see the yellow lores which identified it as a White-throated sparrow, a VERY rare visitor to the yard. I managed a quick photo before the bird disappeared behind the huckleberry bush.
About two years ago we had a White-throated sparrow living under a bush about a block up the street (V Avenue) from us and I took photos of that bird on numerous occasions. I believe that it was that bird that came to the yard once or twice, but as far as I can remember those were our only visits until this day.
This was a SEVEN sparrow species day. Unfortunately our Fox sparrow, which usually frequents our yard, didn’t show while I was observing. (The Fox sparrow was here the following day but the White-throated and White-crowned sparrows were not.)
Here are some of the photos of the sparrows I took…
Another bird of note, a young Brown creeper which visited three different bird baths.
