FOAM LAKE BIRDING
No. 147
This
Thursday, morning as I watched a very rainy and windy day unfold, I was pleased
to see the arrival of the last of our transient birds. So far only the White Crowned and White
Throated sparrows have arrived but the Harris Sparrow, Lincoln's Sparrow and Swainson's Thrush
cannot be too far behind.
As we were
watching the new arrivals a Cooper's Hawk suddenly flew into our back yard and
landed in a tree near the feeders. At
the moment the hawk appeared all the birds including the Grackles and Robins
disappeared. The hawk sat for a few
moments and before I could get my camera it flew off. Almost immediately after the hawk flew away
the Robins returned followed by the rest soon after.
The
transient bird that I will cover this week is the American Tree Sparrow. This close relative and lookalike of the ever
present Chipping Sparrow is quite common in rural areas but not so in urban
ones. Both species sport stripy brown
wings, tails and backs with soft grey breasts and bellies topped off with rusty
red caps. The real difference is that
the Tree Sparrow has a smallish black spot in the middle of its breast whereas
the Chipping Sparrow never has.
However,
both my wife and I had a tough time identifying this bird at first because it
did not look like anything that was pictured in the common bird books. Our bird most closely resembled a Tree Sparrow
except that it was too dark and also had some faint breast striping near the
shoulders of the wings. In many ways it
also resembled a Lincoln's
Sparrow. Finally my wife looked at the
Ken Kaufman guide and there it was - the American Tree Sparrow. Kaufman's guides use actual photographs
instead of paintings which is usually a handicap but not in this case. Kaufman's photo and mine looked exactly the
same. The point to all this is that
birds are not clones and sometimes there is considerable variation between
individuals of the same species as was
the case here. In such situations a
variety of guides are very beneficial in identifying aberrant birds.
This week's
photo of the American tree Sparrow was taken in our back yard right after the
April snow storm.
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