Before I saw a Fox Sparrow, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to identify it, making sure I knew the field marks, etc., so I didn't mistake it for a song sparrow.Turns out this was a bit of a wasted effort on my part-- after weeks of sorting through song sparrows asking myself "could this be a fox sparrow?" I finally saw one and it is unmistakable for a song sparrow. True, the basic form of it is similar, but it's much larger (probably at least 50% bigger) and while the song sparrow has a dominant white with brown & black mixed in, the fox sparrow, when seen from above, is much more brown. In short, if you see a bird which looks like a big, fat, brown song sparrow, you've probably got a fox sparrow in your sights.
As usual, the thumbnail links to a larger picture.
2 comments:
Kudos to you for being able to ID your sparrows. I usually give up after ten minutes of watching throught the binoc's while they keep moving.
Hard to believe there's so many kinds too though. Three years as a Park Naturalist and I still kept telling everyone they were some kind of sparrow.
I can only identify a few on the fly (song, savannah, fox, american tree & white-throated sparrows I can do without consulting field guides). I'm fortunate enough to be able to look over my photographs later, which gives me a lot of time to go over field marks, but there are -so- many varieties of sparrows that it will be years before I can id most of them.
They're not as bad as warblers though :)
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