Title Image

Title Image

About:

This blog is predominately about camera trapping in California. We camera trap to save our souls and to teach primary school students about biology and conservation. We will also touch on other camera trapping news and musings, sets from afar, mediocre herpetology, sucky birding, and other natural history discussions.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Soooooooooooooong Sparrow

So its 2018 and I am going to try and post again this year. I have had trouble making the time to post the last couple of years, and although I don't have more time, I am going to try and up the blogging. Not sure how many people, if any, still read this thing, but it is a better format than Instagram and Twitter (I don't Facebook) for sharing photos and a few thoughts. So we'll see if anyone if still out there in the wildlife biology blogosphere.

Yesterday, I headed out to the bayside trail along the public part of the Facebook campus to see if I could find the Harris's sparrow that was first reported by Don Pendleton on December 12, 2017.

Spoiler alert: I dipped.

But I did see/hear 4 Song Sparrows, including this one. I am not good enough to know for sure that this is a juvenile, but it looked a bit awkward and skinny and kinda sucked at singing so it felt very much like teenager to me. Other calls in the area were much sweeter than this dude's.

SMC-0847

SMC-0850

SMC-0852
In the middle of a Sunny Day Real Estate cover


SMC-0854

Hey, I didn't claim that blog posts were going to be good or epic or anything, just that they should exist in larger numbers.

Quantity over quality in 2018.


6 comments:

  1. Hey just found your blog, keep it up I am enjoying your past posts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Corey. There is a decent amount in the archives so I hope you enjoy it.

      Delete
  2. Still here...yes, start posting again!

    Could be a HY bird but by this time of year last year's juveniles aren't readily distinguishable from older birds. It might just be an AHY still "warming up" for the spring, in other words it might not have the hormones going yet to give it the ability to belt out a proper song.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good point on the hormones, something I had not thought about yet. What threw me a bit was there were other competent individuals around so this one stood out for his inability to sing.

      Thanks for sticking around! Now to go back through lots of old camera trap sets for a few on-topic posts.

      Delete
  3. Yes. I still want to see those sweet condor pix

    ReplyDelete
  4. and 2 year old Mendo cam trap pics, and whale pics, and those Monterey pics and ...

    ReplyDelete