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.