Jan 2, 2008

Lifebird #21 - The Wrong Sparrow

It is something of an oddity that I saw and identified a White-crowned Sparrow in my yard before I found my first White-throated Sparrow, but that’s what the entries in my copy of The Birds of Minnesota and Wisconsin indicate. I do remember one or more of these LBJ’s (little brown jobs) hanging around under our feeders through much of the early winter of 2003. But there were surely White-throated Sparrows present as well. White-crowned Sparrows are the much more unusual species of the two in Minnesota (not that they are rarities).

This species is not at all unexpected in California (where the situation is more than reversed—White-throated Sparrows are quite uncommon there), and two of these photos were taken in California in December of 2007. I photographed the three adults during the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count in Redding, and the juvenile in Anderson River Park a few days earlier. The photo of one on a car was taken during the St Paul Audubon Society’s annual Warbler Weekend in Frontenac, Minnesota.