This afternoon at about 2:45 p.m., I saw a Lark Sparrow on Pope’s Island. The bird was on the southeast part of the island, hanging out with a bunch of Song Sparrows in some of the bushes along the edge of the water. I “pshhed” and it came out to have a look at me — I got a very nice look from about thirty feet away.<\/p>\n
For those of you who are not birders, this is an unusual bird to see in our area. To see it in the middle of an urban setting, about a hundred yards from a busy four-lane highway, was a very nice winter solstice present.<\/p>\n
Field notes:<\/p>\n <\/em>The bird was about thirty feet away, down inside a bush covered with bittersweet. Temp. about 50 F., mostly sunny (low slanting light).<\/p>\n <\/em>General impression: distinctive head pattern; overall color significantly paler than nearby Song Sparrows; overall somewhat slimmer than Song Sparrows.<\/p>\n <\/em>Head: bright reddish brown (chestnut) crown (black right above eyes) with white central stripe; white malar; throat white or pale gray outlined with black; auriculars white and chestnut pattern; gray bill; broad white supercilium; black eye line; lores black.<\/p>\n <\/em>Breast: pale grayish-white, central spot of medium gray.<\/p>\n <\/em>Back and wings: patterned, but not boldly. overall color medium to light grayish-brown, with a faint rufous tinge. <\/p>\n <\/em>Tail, legs, feet: Hidden by bushes. This afternoon at about 2:45 p.m., I saw a Lark Sparrow on Pope’s Island. The bird was on the southeast part of the island, hanging out with a bunch of Song Sparrows in some of the bushes along the edge of the water. I “pshhed” and it came out to have a look at me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-bedford-mass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"