Song Sparrow
Cool and crisp autumn weather has finally arrived here in central Virginia. This is my favorite time of the year, perhaps a result of growng up in the hot and humid summers of St. Louis, and living in a home without air conditioning until I was 14. I always look forward to these cooler temperatures. Most of the migrating warblers and raptors have moved through, although a few migrating warblers are lingering here, and some raptors are still on their way. Autumn also brings late migrants and winter residents, especially some of my favorite sparrow species. Not quite on par with my favorite avian species, warblers/vireos and raptors, sparrows are a close second.
Some birders overlook these LBBs (little brown birds), and think that they are too difficult to learn to identify. Granted, a few of the sparrow species are tough to identify, but many are fairly easy with a little bit of learning. I don't find the general field guides the best for sparrows, and rely heavily on my copy of Sparrows of the United States and Canada by Beadle and Rising. I also have lots and lots of sparrows photos on my web photo pages: Click here to view my sparrows and allies photos, and use your back button to return to this page. There were reliable reports of Lincoln's and Clay-colored Sparrows here in Old Trail a few days ago, but I was not able to find them. I truly believe that some of these rarer sparrow species would be reported more often if more birders made the effort to learn about sparrows. Well, enough of my soapbox. I did a lot of hiking here in Old Trail over the past few days looking especially for sparrows. Most of the photos below were taken today, but a few are from the past three days.
Song Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
I saw a couple of warbler species here as well.
Palm Warbler
Palm Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
And speaking of warblers, I made a trip up to the Route 610/Blue Ridge Parkway yesterday morning, but it was so windy that I didn't stay there very long. I did find one small mixed flock on Route 610, a good place to look for warblers because of lots of places to pull off and very little traffic, but of course, a minute after stopping to do some birding, a utility truck came barreling by around 45 mph and scared all the birds away. I did have a surprise there as well. As soon as I got out of my car, a gray bird, about the size of a Sharp-shinned Hawk, came screaming through the trees from the parkway like a rocket, twisting and turning with ease to maneuver through tree branches. It was over and out of sight in about three seconds, and I am guessing that it was a Peregrine Falcon.
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Blue-headed Vireo
I saw other avian species here in Old Trail as well. A Red-shouldered Hawk was perched in a tree near the south-east corner of the golf course pond, and as I approached the pond, it flew to the north side of the pond, disturbing an Osprey that had been perching in that area off and on for the past several days.
Red-shouldered Hawk
Osprey
I continued my hike and saw several more avian species, including a Thrush that looked to me like a Gray-cheeked in the field.
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Gray-cheeked Thrush
Monarch
I spent the early part of the afternoon processing my photos from this morning, and after looking at the thrush photo, it seemed to have more rufous on its primary and tail feathers that I would have expected on a Gray-cheeked. Could it have been a Bicknell's? Well, I sure wanted to try to re-locate this bird and get a recording of any song or calls it might make. So I went out late afternoon to look for it, but did not find the thrush. However, I did come across a very cooperative Winter Wren (my Old Trail species # 122). This secretive species is usually difficult to see, much less photograph, but this little guy let me take more than 100 photos of it.
Winter Wren
Winter Wren
Winter Wren
Winter Wren
Winter Wren
Winter Wren
Winter Wren
Winter Wren