New World Sparrows are seed eating passerine birds with conical bills.
It was chilly but bright yesterday morning and there were bluebird skies overhead and Antelope Island State Park beckoned and I of course heeded that call.
Lately I've been able to photograph 4 different sparrow species between Antelope Island State Park and Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area.
So, is this the year that the Grinch stole winter?
A little brown bird (LBB) popped into my view today that I couldn't resist photographing and it was this juvenile White-crowned Sparrow.
It was nice to get out yesterday morning and photograph a few birds including this juvenile White-crowned Sparrow perched on a wild rose.
When I lived in Virginia I could almost predict when the first snow would fall because the juncos showed at my feeders up a day or two before the first winter storm.
We catch up and share stories of birds we saw in the warmer months and reveal the journeys we have been on.
Bird photography isn't easy and for smaller birds like this adult White-crowned Sparrow it can be challenging and require more patience than when photographing larger birds.
A Vesper Sparrow caught my eye last week as it fluttered and fluffed on an old barb wire fence near the road and I just had to photograph it.
Earlier this month while I was in Montana I spent time photographing some Savannah Sparrows at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
I like the setting contained in this image with a frost covered branches of a shrub with reddish bark that the White-crowned Sparrow perched on close to the entrance to Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area.
While photographing Barn Owls last January I caught a small movement out of the corner of my eye and noticed a Song Sparrow foraging for seeds on the snow covered ground.
Happy Holidays - White Crowned Sparrow
One of the food items that White-crowned Sparrows depend on during the harsh winters in Utah are the fluffy seeds of the Rabbitbrush that can be covered in hoar frost.
Yesterday the lowest temperature I saw at Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area was -12F which reinforces the thought that "bird photography isn't for everyone" and that winters in Utah are hard on the birds.
Simple things in nature delight me so being able to photograph this juvenile White-crowned Sparrow on a wild rose did just that, it delighted me.
A few days ago while photographing some Greater Yellowlegs and Wilson's Snipes at Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area a couple of Song Sparrows also found their way into my viewfinder.
Lately I have been seeing White-crowned Sparrows in the West Desert, at Farmington Bay WMA and Antelope Island State Park in increasing numbers and many of them will over winter here in the Salt Lake Valley.
In the Centennial Valley of Montana at this time of the year I see plenty of White-crowned Sparrows of the interior west sub-species and although most of them that I see are juveniles there are also adults hanging around foraging too.
Last week while heading up the Skyline Drive of Bountiful Canyon this Green-tailed Towhee was singing on top of a shrub and I was surprised when it hung around for about 2 minutes
Earlier this week I was enthralled to see the Alaska Basin that straddles Idaho and Montana and winds through Beaverhead National Forest and Targhee National Forest.
It was great to get back out into the field yesterday and even better that there were some cooperative Lark Sparrows in my viewfinder.
These are but a few of the birds I photographed this week in various Utah locations and all of them made great subjects!
Brewer's Sparrows were abundant at the location where I photographed Ospreys close to the Flaming Gorge Reservoir last week and it seemed like they sang every time they popped up on top of the Sagebrush in the area.
Yesterday I was able to photograph this Green-tailed Towhee as it sang on top of a Juniper in a canyon of the Stansbury Mountains in Tooele County, Utah.
The only native true lark that lives and breeds in North America is the Horned Lark.
Last month I was able to take images of American Tree Sparrows on two different days in very different conditions in about the same location on Antelope Island State Park.
I wanted to share a few images taken two days ago when Antelope Island was covered with a fresh snow fall. The entire island looked glorious and the sunlight caused the snow to sparkle much to my delight.
The White-crowned Sparrow in this image is small in the frame, the bird isn't super sharp and there isn't a lot of contrast or color to the photo either yet the image speaks to me.
Song Sparrows are found throughout the U.S. and into Canada, some populations move south during the winter to southern states and northern Mexico. So far 30 subspecies of Song Sparrows have been described.