Interesting call - Harris's Sparrow

[David Suddjian]

This morning I was out placing seed at my feeding stations before sunrise. At about 10-15 min. before sunrise, while it was still too dark to see much due to the heavy cloud cover, I heard some bird calls from shrubs in the front yard. The call was not familiar and I did not recognize it, which piqued my interest because there are not too many local bird sounds I do not know. The call was a fairly loud "tsleet" with a plinking attention-grabbing quality. I was able to make an iPhone recording, and while doing so I noticed a cat stalking through the shrubs from whence came the call. Later I was able to compare the call to recordings on the Cornell Master Set, where it matched a recording labeled "alarm call", and to Xeno Canto where it matched a call labeled as "benk". I think it was alarmed by the cat. Later, I saw the sparrow feeding in its usual area. He has been in my yard for a few weeks. Anyway, this is not big news, but I had fun hearing and recording an unfamiliar call and then figuring it out.

The eBird checklist with my recording is here:

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S32671948

Xeno canto recordings can be found here:

http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Zonotrichia-querula

And I've pasted a couple recent digiscoped iPhone images of "Harry" (or Harriet?) below.

David Suddjian

Ken Caryl Valley

Littleton, CO
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