[Tweeters] Old Sam Peabody
Dennis Paulson
dennispaulson at comcast.net
Mon Apr 3 17:48:42 PDT 2023
The same thing happened in our yard in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of Seattle. Last winter we had two White-throated Sparrows through the winter, from 3 November-12 April. This winter the first one we saw was on 5 November, then a second one a few days later, then on 27 November, Scott Ramos and I saw THREE birds at the same time. Subsequently I haven’t seen more than two at a time, but they were both still here two days ago, a very bright white-striped and a much duller tan-striped that didn’t look much brighter than an immature. And at least one of them just started to sing.
Prior to last winter, I had seen a total of 5 White-throated Sparrows in our yard in 30 years, all in migration: 7-8 Oct 1995, 6 May 2002, 22-24 Sep 2010, and 5-8 Oct 2020. Of course I realize that two of the birds this winter could well be the same birds that stayed here last winter, but in any case, there has been a real change in the status of this species right here.
Are they wintering farther north because of climate change, as Steve Hampton has documented (notwithstanding that it snowed a bit this morning!)? Or are a larger number of them coming down the Pacific coast than used to be the case?
Dennis Paulson
Seattle
> On Apr 3, 2023, at 5:09 PM, J. Acker <Owler at sounddsl.com> wrote:
>
> Hey Tweeters,
>
> Its that time of year again. I am hearing “Old Sam Peabody” and I know that means that the White-throated sparrows that have been in the neighborhood for the winter will be leaving very soon. I will miss them. The first arrived at the feeder in early October and the second in mid-January. Both were tan morphs at the time, but have since seemingly molted. One still looks like a tan morph, though the white is brighter but it looks rather ragged, as if it just took a bath. The second now has bright yellow lores and bright white eye stripes, though the median crown still appears tan. Safe travels!
>
> J. Acker
> Owler at sounddsl.com <mailto:Owler at sounddsl.com>
> Bainbridge Island, WA
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu <mailto:Tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20230403/b630587a/attachment.html>
More information about the Tweeters
mailing list