Compare-A-Sparrow

Day 187: Several sparrow species visit my yard over the summer, the most common being White-Crowned (Zonotrichia leucophrys, right). As noted yesterday, Chipping (Spizella passerina) does not appear every year, but Golden-Crowned (Z. atricapilla, left) does. In the course of the thirty-plus years I've lived here, I have observed one English Sparrow (Passer domesticus, non-native and a nuisance) and only a handful of White-Throated (Z. albicollis). However, given that I currently have three of those listed showing up daily at the feeders, and the Birdcast Migration Dashboard says that White-Throated is passing through the county, I have high hopes of seeing one again. Habitat! It's all about providing habitat. When I first moved here, there was very little in the way of shrubbery other than a strip of woods on the far side of the house and a hedge out front. I began planting trees and bushes with a mind to attracting birds. It took ten years or so before they began showing up in number, but I really felt the job was done when the first chickadees settled in. Now, on many days during the summer, I might count two dozen or more different species happily sharing space with one another where food is plentiful.

Big Day Collage

Day 214: First, a disclaimer. These images represent some (but not all) of the 25 species observed from my yard on Global Big Day. All but one of the photos (Anna's Hummer, female) was taken over the two-day period of May 13-14, but each represents a species/sex observed on my Big Day. I knew I'd be busy birding, but even so, I processed over 400 pictures yesterday. The quality is poor in some of these (notably the Raven, taken at 95x zoom and the Violet-green Swallow, taken at 75x zoom), and I would have liked a better representation of the male Red-winged Blackbird, but the males know to fly off when they see me. I'll be posting larger versions of some of the better photos over the next week or so.

There were some notable absences on Big Day. The Varied Thrush declined to put in an appearance, as did the Golden-crowned Sparrow. Song Sparrow didn't show, nor did Northern Flicker. I haven't seen a Red-breasted Sapsucker yet this year, and didn't expect one. Species seen but not photographed include Canada Goose (heard, unmistakably, in numbers) and Black-capped Chickadee, who persisted in hiding deep within the branches of the contorted filbert to eat his seeds. The male Goldfinch presented himself last of all, capping off a pretty darn good backyard Big Day.

Identification key (left to right, top to bottom):
Row 1: Anna's Hummingbirds (male and female), Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Dark-eyed Junco, Rufous Hummingbirds (male and female)
Row 2: American Robin, Purple Finch, Evening Grosbeaks (male and female), Mourning Dove, Band-tailed Pigeon
Row 3: Northwestern Crows, Spotted Towhee, American Goldfinch (male and female), Red-breasted Nuthatch, Common Raven
Row 4: Pine Siskin, Steller's Jay, Black-headed Grosbeaks (male and female), White-crowned Sparrow, European Starling
Row 5: Brown-headed Cowbirds (male and female), Tree Swallow, Violet-green Swallow, Red-winged Blackbirds (male and female)

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.

I Am Light, I Am Shadow

Day 352: People might wonder why anyone would plant a tree which would drop a messy load of berries in their yard come autumn. It's for this, this right here: a once-a-year, hit-or-miss, might-happen-or-not event lasting a few days at most. Of course, I am speaking of the arrival of the Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum), to my way of thinking one of the most beautiful birds of the Pacific Northwest. A few days ago, the American Robins began working on the berries on the smaller of my two Mountain-ash trees, a native shrub rather than a cultivar like the larger one which overhangs my driveway, so I have been on a window vigil, hoping to catch sight of a Waxwing. Yesterday, deep in the shadows of the leaves, I spotted something not-Robin. It seemed to have a freckled breast, and that threw me off for a few minutes until I checked my field guide. Have I really never seen a young Waxwing before? The adults have a clear breast, so clear and uniform in colour that it looks painted, but yes, the juveniles are mottled and blotched. The youngster stayed hidden as much as he could, only tempted out as far as the juicy berries borne on a branch tangled into the neighbouring dogwood. Others were more brazen, but still gave way when an influx of clumsy robins overwhelmed them. I watched as bunch after bunch of orange berries disappeared into hungry mouths. I think the supply will last two or three more days at most. Then the brief harvest festival of Waxwing Days 2020 will have passed into history.

Red's Branch

Day 240: I have to admit to cheating here. I don't usually doctor nature photos unless it's to remove small bits of dirt or holes from leaves and petals, and even that is something I do rarely, preferring to show the specimen exactly as I saw it. However, Red is just cute as a bug's ear, and his preferred shelter is a broken wisteria trig caught under the soffit of my carport. It protects him from both wind and rain, an alternative to the clothesline under my back porch awning when the breeze is from a different quarter. The wisteria branch projects out just far enough for the light to catch his brilliant throat feathers, but the background of ugly soffit was more than I could stand. I took a deliberately out-of-focus shot of the dogwood beside the driveway and pasted Red and his twig over it, paring away 90% of the original photo. I think he'll be much happier in this setting until the weather changes.

Brown-Headed Cowbird Male

Day 209: Another of my "backyard birds," Brown-Headed Cowbirds exhibit sexual dimorphism, i.e., the males (shown above) are coloured differently than the females. The female is a nondescript brownish-grey, identifiable as a Cowbird most easily when she strikes the pose typical of the species: beak pointed at the sky, the spine in an almost perfectly straight line from the back of the head to the tail. For want of better terms, it makes them look pin-headed and silly, but Cowbirds are not as brainless as they may look. Cowbirds are brood-parasites, which is to say that they do not build their own nests but lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species. Because their eggs (sometimes as many as three dozen in a season!) develop more rapidly than those of their unwitting hosts, the young frequently outcompete the less-developed offspring of the nest-building species. The good news is that some hosts recognize Cowbird eggs when they see them, and may start a new nest on top of the Cowbird eggs, puncture them, or pitch them out of the nest altogether. So how do young Cowbirds know that in fact they are Cowbirds, and not, say, Warblers? Studies have suggested that they recognize both the call and the appearance of adult Cowbirds in just a few weeks from hatching, and may even examine themselves for comparison to adults, as was demonstrated when both young Cowbirds and adults were artifically marked. The young birds, seeing a distinctive marking on themselves, were drawn to similarly marked adults. That said, Brown-Headed Cowbirds are gifted vocal mimics as well. I spent some time trying to figure out how a whinnying horse had gotten fifty feet up an old Doug-fir at my previous home.

Golden-Crowned Puzzle

Day 205: "Tsee-see, soo-soo! Tsee-see, soo-soo!" The pitch was the same as that of the Varied Thrush, but two sets of two syllables instead of one with the notes widely separated, and without the burriness of the Thrush's call. I hear the bird every spring and, to the best of my knowledge, had never laid eyes on it, or at least not to see it issuing the call. "Tsee-see, soo-soo!" was driving me nuts. I listened to every recording of bird calls I have in the house, including the full eight hours of "Birding By Ear," tried different internet sources for recordings and/or mnemonic guides, but nothing fit with the song I was hearing. It had to be a fairly common bird, so I sat out on my back porch, listening. Ten minutes into my vigil, I heard it at a distance. I tried whistling the call, knowing that I can do a passin' fair Varied Thrush owing to the fact that I don't whistle well; in fact, my whistle is thready and weak, somewhat doubled by a crooked front tooth. Sure enough, "Tsee-see, soo-soo!" echoed back to me from a nearby shrub. I whistled again. The response was immediate. Back and forth we went, talking to each other, until finally the bird moved into visual range. I whistled again, and the Golden-Crowned Sparrow perched on the end of the raspberry cage opened its beak and issued his reply. Satisfied that I had solved a mystery of some years' standing, I double-checked with Cornell Labs' "All About Birds" recordings. Yup, Golden-Crowned Sparrow, Zonotrichia atricapilla. "Tsee-see, soo-soo!" to you too, sir!

Purple Finch Male

Day 199: Backyard birding has taken on a whole new relevance since COVID-19 appeared on our maps, and although I'm not likely to see any new species, it's a delight when one of the "summer folk" arrives. I presently have a disproportionate number of female Purple Finches giving the few brightly coloured males a wide selection of potential mates. The female is an LBJ, "Little Brown Job" in birder parlance, and sometimes difficult to identify at first glance because she resembles a sparrow. Look for a light "eyebrow," a heavy, seed-cracking beak and a dark lateral (side) stripe on the throat which begins at the lower part of the bill. The male is much easier to pin down. He looks as if he'd bathed in raspberry juice. Where the species overlap, males can be confused with those of House Finch, but remember: Houses have shingles, i.e., their breasts are marked with dark flecks. The breast of the male Purple Finch is clear.