Hi all,
This morning while grabbing some fresh straw for our sheep (funny how we
went from parched to muddy conditions so fast), I heard a bit of chatter
that sounded vaguely like a Wilson's Warbler so I thought I'd better
check it out.
No warbler, but I did find a bunch of sparrows and juncos, including a
couple of the usual dark chocolate-brown SOOTY FOX SPARROWS that winter
in big numbers in the mid-Willamette Valley.
Another, strikingly paler Fox Sparrow was sitting up in a bush -- light
enough that at first I thought it might be from one of the subspecies in
the Slate-colored Fox Sparrow complex. But after squinting at it long
and hard (I didn't have my binoculars with me), I came away convinced
that it was another member of the SOOTY FOX SPARROW complex, just one of
the palest ones that I've seen around here in a long time.
According to my favorite sparrow reference (by Rising & Beadle), the
palest subspecies of Sooty Fox Sparrow are the ones that nest in the
Aleutians and sw Alaska. These are also the ones that winter farthest
south in California, leapfrogging the darker subspecies that nest closer
to us in coastal British Columbia.
So, perhaps some of these northern/northwestern Fox Sparrows are
migrating through Oregon now ... something else fun to watch for, if
you're a sparrow fan!
Happy birding,
Joel
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
OBOL archives: www.freelists.org/archive/obol
Manage your account or unsubscribe: //www.freelists.org/list/obol
Contact moderators: obol-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
