I saw the Barred owl, featured in my last post, on October 11, 2019. But it wasn’t the first, or what I considered the most interesting bird I saw that day. As I believe I mentioned, my prime consideration for the location I was monitoring was to try to photograph American robins eating madrone berries, and I succeeded to some extent. However the robins would come and go and even when they were present they weren’t always where they could be photographed.

I spent considerable ‘down time’ watching (and photographing) several species of sparrows come and go from the bushes beside me. This included Golden-crowned sparrows,

House sparrows,

Song sparrows,

a Fox sparrow,

Dark-eyed juncos, Spotted towhees, White-crowned sparrows

(seven sparrow species)… and one other very significant sparrow species.

I was only casually watching the White-crowned sparrows… all appeared to be juveniles (I seldom see the tan morph in this area) when I saw a sparrow that looked different. A closer examination revealed it was a White-throated sparrow (an eighth sparrow species, all in a rather small area, although not all at the same time!). I’ve only seen a White-throated sparrow 5-6 times in my life, and I haven’t any idea how I would find one if I tried! So here is the White-throated sparrow… seen over a three-day period and at a cost of some 6-8 hours thus far.

And I don’t want to leave out one other visitor to the same location… a Bewick’s wren that responded to ‘pishing’.