One of the birds appeared to be an intergrade between the 'leucophrys' and 'gambelii' subspecies. There is only a tiny hint of a lore line, and the lower mandible appeared to be orangish while the upper mandible appeared to be a bit more pinkish, although the sun is probably affecting the true colors of the bill. You can see the difference in the bill color between the two birds in the cropped version of the last photo. My opinion is that this is mostly a "Gambel's" White-crowned, but not pure enough to call it that. The single bird photo, and the left bird in the other three photos, is the bird in question.
While checking the rest of the area, an immature Northern Harrier flew by.
Other raptors seen there included a Cooper's Hawk, a Sharp-shinned Hawk, and an adult Bald Eagle.
Two Common Yellowthroats were seen, including this one that cooperated for a couple photos.
A pair of Purple Finches were also spotted deep in a tree near the stream.
Other notables included an Eastern Phoebe, one Golden-crowned and one Ruby-crowned Kinglet, 2 Eastern Bluebirds, 3 Cedar Waxwings, 13 Yellow-rumped Warblers, 7 American Goldfinches, and 3 Red-winged Blackbirds. I ended up with 39 species in about three hours.
I came up with sparrow counts of 43 Song, 12 Swamp, 11 White-throated, 5 Savannah, 2 Lincoln's, 2 Field, a Chipping Sparrow, and one Dark-eyed Junco.
No comments:
Post a Comment