birding sunday

This weekend Deanna and I were both still suffering the ill effects of a cold virus we caught last weekend in Louisiana (or on the airplane) but I managed to drag myself out to the back yard for a few hours today to enjoy the spring weather and to supervise Ptolemy (our cat). The wonderful golden-orange tinted house finch hasn't shown himself for about a week now, though I still hear his joyful song from a few houses away.

Today we were visited by several scrub jays, a mockingbird (he's been around for a few days now), a couple of california towees, a titmouse or two, one of the northern flickers (who landed in the yard!), one anna's hummingbird, and quite a few golden-crowned sparrows.

The hummingbird and titmouse were too quick for me and so I didn't get a chance to put the binoculars down and pick up my camera to get any good photos of those guys but the sparrows were content spending long spells lined up on the fence watching me watching them so I took a few snapshots. You can click the thumbnails below to see larger photos.

I know that most people don't spend much time looking at sparrows (probably any birds, for that matter, but especially sparrows) because they consider them so common and not particularly attractive -- especailly pecking around on the ground outside of restaurants and such. For house sparrows (not technically a sparrow) I tend to agree. Not only are they an invasive, non-natives responsible for driving away one of my favorite locals, blue birds, but in cities and even sub-urban areas, they tend to be dust and dirt covered and so their markings don't really stand out.

It's a different story with these golden-crowns and the occaisional white-crown I see hanging out with them. They can be strikingly beautiful . We've got a couple of small bird baths in the back yard which they take full advantage of so they stay fairly clean of dust and grime and when the light's right, you can really see some wonderful details and you certainly won't miss that striking shock of yellow on the top of their heads.

If you're interested in seeing the full resolution, full color versions of any of the photos I post here, just let me know. My bandwidth is limited so I crop and scale them down to "medium" jpg quality and about half-size or thereabouts.

Posted by asa at April 11, 2004 08:33 PM