ML507243721

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

I heard the characteristic tink tink calls while driving, and was curious about what Sage Sparrows were here. I played short bursts of Sagebrush Sparrow tape first, and some canescens Sparrows towards the end. Several birds responded to both, and possibly a little more to the canescens Sparrow tape - but maybe they were already agitated by that point. All the sparrows I could identify had thin streaking on the back, and fairly thick malar stripes. I despair about separating these and Sagebrush Sparrows without DNA, but I can say that none of the sparrows I saw had thick streaking that would put them comfortably in this Sagebrush category. I have found malar stripes extremely variable in canescens sparrows in the Antelope valley, with some birds showing extremely weak malars - so I'm not sure how useful that is. I have heard that one field mark to look for in Sagebrush Sparrows is that the malar stripes are paler than the gray in the face. This was not true in the birds I saw today. One or two birds were coaxed into brief song -- the phrases were truncated but sounded fine for Bell's Sparrow. I spent about 20-30 minutes with these birds before I got very cold. If this were a warmer day (or had I gotten here earlier), I could have spent hours here with just Sage Sparrows

Technical information

Model

NIKON D5600

ISO

1400

Focal length

500 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/800 sec

Dimensions

2500 pixels x 1672 pixels

Original file size

1.08 MB