White-throated Sparrow - Centennial (Arapahoe)

[Jared Del Rosso]

This afternoon, I spent some time in the back of my yard, looking for a small song bird that I'd earlier seen up in the trees. That was probably a House Finch, but the leaf litter below those trees was busy. Moving in after a Spotted Towhee was a White-throated Sparrow, both scratching around for bird seed. This was a new yard bird for me. And it's an especially gratifying one, as the White-throated Sparrow is among my favorite birds for all the singing it does in the woods around my wife's hometown in northern Minnesota. 

Around the yard: My first yard junco of the season stopped by this morning and a scrub jay has been visiting, along with the magpies and Blue Jays, my platform feeder for in-shell peanuts. (The scrub jay is now noisily attacking the cruddy PetSmart suet that I recently purchased and that the woodpeckers seem to be avoiding.) At one point, it seemed to me that a magpie was dampening a peanut in my bird bath. At a minimum, it flew from the platform feeder to the bird bath, put the peanut down in the bath, took a few drinks, retrieved its food, then flew off. So perhaps it was only at the water for a drink. I couldn't tell. I've seen crows soften food in water, but not yet magpies. 

- Jared Del Rosso

Centennial, CO

[Jared Del Rosso]

The snow & cold took branches around my neighborhood and didn't give much back. No hummers or other noticeable arrivals, save a third junco joining the two that showed up before the snow. The neighborhood's visiting scrub jay is still making occasional forays to my platform feeder. It and the Blue Jays and magpies seem to just be scattering the shell on peanuts around my neighborhood. And the White-throated Sparrow, rather predictably, hasn't gone anywhere. It doesn't come out from the brush, though, nearly as often as the Spotted Towhees and juncos do. 

- Jared Del Rosso

Centennial, CO