[EBB Sightings] Crowned Sparrows

Dear Birders:

After a winter of only juncoes at my feeder, White and Golden-crowned Sparrows showed up this morning in big numbers.  The last two or three years, it's been only juncoes and the resident California Towhee while a block away where the gardens border the open grasslands, I regularly hear the Golden and White-crowned Sparrow.  Maybe this big group of late sparrows are migrants happy to find a tray full of millet seed.

Two days ago, on a foggy mornings soon after daybreak, I heard the first 'whisper song' of a Hermit Thrush in its warm-up for breeding season which for our coastal species is the northern forests (not the Sierra Nevada). 

So far, no one has taken up occupancy in one of my bird boxes, this year augmented by two store-bought boxes, one a pricey cedar chickadee box bearing the Audubon label.  Maybe seven boxes is excessive -- a turn-off rather than a come-on. 

--Phila Rogers