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Answer 3 |
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Photo #3 “Difficult” A streaky brownish bird with a conical, seed-eating bill, and the shade of brown on the back is too warm in tone for any of our streaked finches—this has to be a sparrow of some sort. Except for some crown streaking, though, the head on this bird is quite plain, eliminating quite a few sparrows with head stripes, auricular patches, and other fairly bold markings. The possibilities for sparrows with streaked underparts and a plain gray face are relatively few. Some forms of Fox Sparrow have this combination, but these are either grayer-backed with plainer upperparts, or have rufous streaking on the underparts, usually then with some face patterning. Anyway, this just doesn't have the overall look of a Fox Sparrow, and the likelihood of one being in Santa Cruz County in July is slim. Black-chinned Sparrow juveniles (unlikely in the county away from a few areas of chaparral in the higher mountains) are only faintly streaked below, and have a fairly uniform gray head. None of the normal streaked sparrows seem to fit, nor any of those with unstreaked underparts that are streaked below in juvenile plumage (like White-crowned, Chipping, Grasshopper, etc.). Ignore all the streaks, though, and this bird does look similar to a member of the sparrow family that does not have “sparrow” as part of its name. In particular, the plain gray of the face seems set off from the rest of the plumage suggesting a hood, like a junco. Make the hood a little more clearcut, remove all the streaking, change the bill color to pink, and you will have an adult Dark-eyed Junco. And when this particular bird flew, it showed white outer tail feathers and gave a twittering series of “tick” calls, confirming that it is a junco, as did the adult junco that accompanied this bird and a couple other juveniles. There aren't always adults around, though, and sometimes one can't get a good look at the tail, so an encounter with one of these can be confusing. This juvenile “Oregon” Dark-eyed Junco was at Natural Bridges on July 20.
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