Donna
I'm Falcon Crazy
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<3 FLY FREE "CHARLOTTE" <3
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« on: 05-Mar-10, 07:22:13 AM » |
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Most of us bird people, both the folks who feed birds and we who actively pursue them in the field, take pride in "knowing" the locals and being the experts of our own slice of habitat.
We are confident that the Goldfinches will show up at our feeders by Christmas, and we nod knowingly when our Brown Thrasher sings his first twilight song of spring. And, indeed, we weed-pullers and berry pickers and flower tenders are the experts of our own patches of ground.
But the very familiarity that we have with our own gardens and yards can lead to carelessness and complacency. I lived in our house for 20 years oblivious to the healthy population of glass snakes in the yard until I pulled two cold-stiffened beauties from the same bag of compost where they had been hibernating. Now, I doubt that anyone has ever made this comparison, but white-crowned sparrows are just like those legless lizards - at least they are in being overlooked.
My first White-crowned sparrows were foraging around a picnic table on the side of New Hampshire's breath-taking Kancamagus Highway during the height of New England's fiery fall color. I would have never seen them but for guy with binoculars pointed down hill instead of up at the trees - a sure sign of a birder. They were beautiful birds, large for sparrows, 6 inches from bill tip to tail and weighing in at 1 solid ounce. As you might imagine the adults have bright white crowns with contrasting black head stripes and solid gray throats - very handsome, indeed.
As any conscientious intermediate birder would, I checked my obvious identification in my Peterson's Guide to Eastern Birds and then ticked off the species on my life list at the beginning of the book. I left New Hampshire feeling secure that I now knew the White-crowned Sparrow, a resident bird of the cold slopes of central New Hampshire.
The next White-crowned Sparrow I saw was sitting in a with several other sparrow types in a thicket beside the Natchez Trace Parkway just North of the Ross Barnett Reservoir. Not that I recognized the critter, mind you. There was not a hint of crown on this bird, in fact I was hard pressed to find any field marks at all. I was busy wearing out the sparrow pages in my field guide by flipping them back and forth when a pickup truck coasted off the road, and a fellow birder climbed out with a nod in my direction. Once again, the binoculars gave him away.
Most of us bird people, both the folks who feed birds and we who actively pursue them in the field, take pride in "knowing" the locals and being the experts of our own slice of habitat.
We are confident that the Goldfinches will show up at our feeders by Christmas, and we nod knowingly when our Brown Thrasher sings his first twilight song of spring. And, indeed, we weed-pullers and berry pickers and flower tenders are the experts of our own patches of ground.
But the very familiarity that we have with our own gardens and yards can lead to carelessness and complacency. I lived in our house for 20 years oblivious to the healthy population of glass snakes in the yard until I pulled two cold-stiffened beauties from the same bag of compost where they had been hibernating. Now, I doubt that anyone has ever made this comparison, but white-crowned sparrows are just like those legless lizards - at least they are in being overlooked.
My first White-crowned sparrows were foraging around a picnic table on the side of New Hampshire's breath-taking Kancamagus Highway during the height of New England's fiery fall color. I would have never seen them but for guy with binoculars pointed down hill instead of up at the trees - a sure sign of a birder. They were beautiful birds, large for sparrows, 6 inches from bill tip to tail and weighing in at 1 solid ounce. As you might imagine the adults have bright white crowns with contrasting black head stripes and solid gray throats - very handsome, indeed.
As any conscientious intermediate birder would, I checked my obvious identification in my Peterson's Guide to Eastern Birds and then ticked off the species on my life list at the beginning of the book. I left New Hampshire feeling secure that I now knew the White-crowned Sparrow, a resident bird of the cold slopes of central New Hampshire.
The next White-crowned Sparrow I saw was sitting in a with several other sparrow types in a thicket beside the Natchez Trace Parkway just North of the Ross Barnett Reservoir. Not that I recognized the critter, mind you. There was not a hint of crown on this bird, in fact I was hard pressed to find any field marks at all. I was busy wearing out the sparrow pages in my field guide by flipping them back and forth when a pickup truck coasted off the road, and a fellow birder climbed out with a nod in my direction. Once again, the binoculars gave him away.
After admiring my display of page flipping dexterity for a while, he took pity on me. "It's amazing how plain juvenile White-crowned Sparrows can look this time of year, isn't it?"
Of course, I quickly agreed with the man. And back in my van, I carefully wrote, immature White-crowned Sparrow (no sign of crown). I drove home that day thankful for the kindness of birders and buoyed by seeing this rare northern bird so far South.
And then I started birding with Larry Morgan. Larry was even greener than I was, and I happy to give any help I could. But I soon found out that what Larry lacked in experience he more than made up for in sheer native brain power honed by years of delivering the U.S. mail. And Larry had a secret weapon as a birder - he wasn't an expert. He didn't know what to expect in the field, so he was open to everything. On our first field trip together Larry spotted a rare winter vagrant Ash-throated Flycatcher that I would have never expected and would have overlooked.
So when Larry mentioned something about White-crowned Sparrows at his pond, I was skeptical, but intrigued. And that day for the very first time I turned to the back of my field guide and actually looked at range map for White-crowned Sparrows. I was shocked to see that White Crowns do not breed in New Hampshire. Those Kancamagus birds were passing though, just like I was. They nest in the far northern land of stunted trees and high alpine slopes out west. And the bigger surprise was that the wintering range of the White-crowned Sparrow includes all of Mississippi.
Before the week was out, I stood with Larry at his pond watching curious White-crowned Sparrows watch us from the thick brush. And before another week had come and gone I had found three White-crowns in my very own backyard. So, beware of experts, especially when they are standing in your own shoes.
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