Slate-colored Fox Sparrow
Tue, 29 Sep 1998 09:58:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: Emilie
Does anyone know anything about these guys? According to the new Rising sparrow book, they are going to be (might be? are?) split into 3 or 4 species. The northern "California classic" wintering one here on the coast is the Sooty according to the book. Anyways, on Sunday (9/27) at Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley I saw an extremely gray-headed, small-billed Fox Sparrow foraging in a group of mixed sparrows at the southern end of the native shrub area (which is just north of the parking turn-around). I have never seen one of these on the coast - has anyone else? The Rising book categorizes this as Passerella schistacea schistacea. The individual I saw was much grayer on the head than that depicted in the book (thought it was a sage or black-thr[oated] sparrow when I first saw it). Rising says that this is the Great Basin/Rockies species/subspecies and maps them as wintering in S[outhern] Calif., yet also mentions that they winter here in the SF Bay region. Grinnell and Miller wasn't much help to me because they break the group into many more subspecies.
Re: Slate-colored Fox Sparrow
Tue, 29 Sep 1998 12:35:03 PDT
From: Joseph Morlan
Emilie wrote:
Anyways, on Sunday (9/27) at Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley I saw an extremely gray-headed, small-billed Fox Sparrow foraging in a group of mixed sparrows at the southern end of the native shrub area (which is just north of the parking turn-around). I have never seen one of these on the coast - has anyone else?
I think they're pretty uncommon, but distinctive. I saw one a number of years ago at Water Lane in Pescadero and two years ago when I was living in San Francisco, we had one visiting our seed feeder for a while.
Joseph Morlan, Pacifica, CA 94044
Visit my California Birding Pages:
http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~jmorlan
California Bird Records Committee:
http://www.wfo-cbrc.org/cbrc
Plant sales this coming weekend
Tue, 29 Sep 1998 20:01:17 -0700
From: Larry Tunstall
A short time ago, there was some discussion on this list about the correct
date for the native plant sale at Merritt College in Oakland. I just added
the info about that sale (and some others that feature plants for bird- and
butterfly-friendly gardens) to the calendar pages for Oct 3 and 4 at
http://www.best.com/~folkbird/calendar/
Happy birding AND gardening,
Larry Tunstall
http://www.best.com/~folkbird/
East Bay birders website:
http://www.best.com/~folkbird/EBBC/
[P.S. added on the webpage version: For ongoing information about gardening events, see The Bay Area Gardener at http://www.gardens.com/ ]