Interesting Sparrow / Denver

[Dave Cameron]

Just thinking out loud, I post this mainly to alert fellow suburbanites to keep their eyes peeled. 

 

Yesterday morning, still in my robe, I went out to fill the feeders.  As I wrestled with one, trying not to spill a scoop of sunflower with one hand while not getting snow on my slippers with the other, I realized there was a sparrow perched on a tube feeder about 15 or 20 feet from me.  Pale yellowish, with streaks down the sides of the breast, streaks that were so defined they looked to have been drawn with a pen, very much unlike the smeared streaks of, say, a song sparrow.  Thicker and lower than  Lincoln's, though.   A darkish crown, and.....

 

0.9 seconds later, it flew, already wary of me moving before I spotted it.  Could it, I wonder, have been a LeConte's?  I'm not familiar with the bird, and my look at it was far to brief to make a claim.  I've had my nose pressed to the glass for 24 hours, hoping for it's return, but to no avail.  It seems to have moved on, if it's ignored the obvious feeding activity that's gone on here since.

 

I settled for 2 White-breasted and 2 Red-breasted Nuthatches, 1 Brown Creeper, 2 Chickadees, 1 pair Downys, 1 pair Flickers, a half dozen Juncos including a couple of newly-arrived Pink-sided, one exciting attack on House Sparrows by an adult Cooper's Hawk, and some noisy crows.  Fingers crossed for a longer look at that sparrow.

 

Dave Cameron

Harvey Park, Denver