This morning while birding my yard from my side porch, I saw an unusual bird sitting about 15 feet up in one of my trees. I knew it was a sparrow, but I also knew that I had never seen one like it before. When I put the binoculars on it, I could see it had a very pronounced white eye-ring and white outer tail feathers. It stayed in the tree for about 20 minutes, occasionally chipping. It left the tree and landed at the base of the same tree. It began hopping around kicking leaves like an Eastern Towhee would do. I contacted Mike Sanders to see if he could stop by, but it was gone by the time he arrived. I'm just wondering if the bird I'm describing is a Vesper Sparrow, and what the other possibilities would be. Gary Cooper Bristol, Virginia