Wintering Sparrows in CA

Young White-crowned

Older White-crowned

Golden-crowned

Savannah

S/OOY

This Golden-crowned Sparrow was first banded on the island in 2005, then color banded in 2006. It has returned every year since, and was found again just a couple of days ago! Why does it come back?

Some birds

Swamp


Fox, Golden-crowned, White-crowned


Black-throated blue

At Diana's

Western Scrub Jay, eating it all


California's Towhee


Golden-crowned Sparrows, not color banded

Fog at the gulch today

Banded at Pine Gulch today with Lisa. Alright day, but felt kind of rusty having not banded since sunday. We got 17 birds, 8 species.

This lil guy was very tangled in the net, so I had to cut him out eventually. He eventually flew off, but kind of pitifully. Sorry lil guy.


That is a tick. I tried removing it, but couldn't I sliced it, so that it would at least not impede vision as much.


Here's a golden crowned sparrow. Their crown patterns can vary quite a bit, and can only be used for ageing if they are at the more extreme ends of having very little brown striping, or a lot of black. This one was in between, but had about three black feathers on its head, which make you wonder.

Potter

Today it was too windy to run the nets so instead we set up some potter traps (the traps I used to catch those chickadees in Duluth) around our site, using bird seed as bait. We ended up catching around 13 birds, which was pretty good, but checking them every 15 minutes got tiring. We got a wrentit, a couple spotted towhees, a nuttall's white crowned sparrow, a few golden crowned sparrows, a couple song sparrows, a few fox sparrows.

Here are some bad pictures!

Nets


white crowned sparrow


golden crowned sparrow


song sparrow


diana with a spotted towhee


spotted towhee