The tail looks to be growing in, perhaps after some incident. You can see short
feathers and my guess is that the longer feathers are not all the way in.
Alan Contreras
acontrer56@xxxxxxxxx
Eugene, Oregon
www.alanlcontreras.com
Attending Christmas Bird Counts with good weather forecasts.
On Nov 24, 2019, at 11:21 AM, Priscilla Sokolowski <priscillanhk@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Dear OBOL birders;
Probably I just have one of our everyday Song Sparrows here,
but I'm troubled by the short "wren-like" tail and something about the wings
feathers - (with white edges?). I'm not sure the streaking is entirely
typical of our local species either. So I'm wondering if it is another
subspecies. I wondered about it and asked a few friends who also thought it
is a bit different, and was ready to drop the issue until Sally Hill posted
her melodica/atlantica Saturday.
My bird was Thursday, Nov 24, at Hileman County Park, which is a few miles
north of Santa Clara, near to but on the west side of the Willamette River.
For what it's worth, this is 5.7 miles east of Sally Hill's melodia/atlantica
seen yesterday on Bond Rd near the airport.
While I think of sparrows are being difficult -(for me), I'm surprised as I
list them, to see that I can usually recognize Lincoln's, Savannahs, Song,
Chipping, Golden Crowned, White-crowned, White-throated and Fox. But really,
those all have some very conspicuous field marks if you see enough of the
bird. So maybe I'm not crazy to think this Song Sparrow is not our usual
variety.
Observations:
The Hileman bird was in the blackberries bordering the side trail towards the
West. It didn't stay in sight, nor did it sing. Nor did it just dive into the
thicket below as more of our group approached. It was about 70 feet away from
us. Instead, it took flight 30 feet parallel to the trail, to another bush,
landing lower in that bush. That's where I got the photo of it. It only
perched there a few seconds and then flew again and I lost sight of it.
Unfortunately, I did not get any photos showing the breast of the bird. Our
bird is squat shaped compared to many of our song sparrows, with a shorter
tail and something different about the wings (when perched).
Here's the only good photo I managed to get:
http://priscillanhk.com/images/songsparrow-subspecies.jpg ;
<http://priscillanhk.com/images/songsparrow-subspecies.jpg>
Priscilla Sokolowski
