365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Monday, October 12, 2020
Nicknames
Day 365: You may have noticed that many of the visitors to my yard have been given generic or individual nicknames. There's Nut, the 'Dee-dees, Little Blue Snot (the Lazuli Bunting), Snowflake (a junco with a single white feather on its head) and so on. This is GC, short for Golden-Crowned Sparrow. If you think back to an earlier post this year, I had what I believed to be a dozen or so juvenile Chipping Sparrows foraging on the ground below the feeders. I realize now that my identification was in error. Birds exhibiting the same behaviour have now coloured up, and the patch on their heads is noticeably yellow. This species is more common to my yard, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't immediately recognize GC when he was younger. Now that he is nicknamed, this episode of Backyard Birding will jog my memory when the juveniles show up next year.
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