I’ve been holding off posting new material here on the blog because I’m still toying with the idea of starting over from scratch to improve the load times. However, I gotta get some more updates out. This past winter (since January 1) I’ve had 4 life sparrows: Clay-colored, Grasshopper, Sagebrush, and Vesper. I’ve also gotten reasonably good photos of some non-lifers: Chipping, Dark-eyed Junco, Lincoln’s, and the ubiquitous Song Sparrow.
I saw the Vesper Sparrow in January during the scouting trip for the Christmas Bird Count out on the Carrizo Plain, and then I saw the Sagebrush Sparrows the following day, the day of the count itself.Also in January, here at Atascadero Lake, I got a reasonable photo of my favorite sparrow, Lincoln’s
Later in the year, in February, the eBird alert for rare birds in the area reported Clay-colored Sparrows up at a park in Paso Robles, so off I went, where I found a couple of them mixed in with a flock of a dozen or so Chipping Sparrows:
In early April, I was at Laguna Lake down in SLO, where I kept hearing Grasshopper Sparrows, but the only ones I “saw” were Savannah Sparrows. When I posted my photos of these “Savannahs,” our local eBird reviewer contacted me to point out that I had uploaded a lovely photo of a Grasshopper Sparrow. I also got some better photos of Rufous-Crowned, which was why I was scrambling in the hills up above the lake in the first place. (Not literally; I was on an established trail, not scrambling, but…)
And finally, in other April excursions around the area, I was able to get some good looks at some more familiar (to me) species: Dark-eyed Juncos at Sweet Springs Nature Preserve in Los Osos, and Song Sparrows at my very local Atascadero Lake.
