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Where the Sparrows Are

10,000 Birds

Specifically, the area surrounding our church is my best place to see sparrows, both residents and our (much more common) winter migratory sparrows. The arrival of those migratory species was my motivation for spending a Monday around our church last week. Happily, nobody would struggle to identify a Lark Sparrow.

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Out Birding to Help an Endemic Sparrow in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Today, along with teams in a few other parts of Costa Rica and elsewhere, I will be birding for a cause, watching birds to help one that only lives in Costa Rica, the Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrow. Around the size of a Song Sparrow or Chaffinch , maybe a bit bigger, this mini towhee forages near the ground in dense scrubby vegetation.

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Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America: A Review by a Sparrow Fan

10,000 Birds

I like sparrows. I like observing them, reading about them, grappling with species and subspecies identification, and even—on a good day—talking about sparrow taxonomy. The book does not include House Sparrow, an Old World sparrow that belongs to a completely different bird family. Scope of Book.

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Ground-Sparrows and Brush-Finches

10,000 Birds

Common birds, you see, tend to have simple names, like House Sparrow, House Finch, or House Wren. A hyphen in a bird’s “first” name can occur pretty much anywhere, which is why the United States has a good supply of birds like White-crowned Sparrows and Yellow-rumped Warblers. But not all hypens are created equal.

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The Hidden Qualities of House Sparrows

10,000 Birds

I therefore decided to counter this month’s heinous wood-warbler attack on my retina by choosing the good old trusty House Sparrow as the topic of my May post. The last aspect is something I will elaborate on further below, but not before showing off a prime fine male House Sparrow, unethically photographed at its nest site.

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New York City Park Department Contractor Tears Up Imperiled Sparrows Home

10,000 Birds

A New York City Parks Department contractor just wiped out a breeding population of sparrows in tons of trouble already, on land owned by the parks department that was supposed to be protected as “Forever Wild.” It looks to me like they drove a crane straight through this section of what’s called Four Sparrow Marsh. Not anymore.

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Vesper Sparrows in Queens

10,000 Birds

Every autumn I spend an inordinate amount of time examining the edges of fields, scrubby stands of brush, and everywhere else that little brown jobs, otherwise known as sparrows, might appear. Of course, I’m always hoping to find Lark Sparrows , Grasshopper Sparrows , Clay-colored Sparrows and other about annual rarities.

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