Riders on the Storm + Sparrow Challenge, Boulder

[Richard Pautsch]

From my desk window on West Pearl today, I saw both Western and Mountain Bluebirds, neither of which I've seen from home before.

I went over to Community Gardens as the sun came out late this afternoon.  Both Bluebirds were there as well, along with an Olive-sided Flycatcher on a steel fence post, a very tired Western Pewee on the ground, and Pine Siskins. A Kestrel came by and picked off one of the exhausted birds.

If you're restless at home and seeking a real birding challenge, check out the numerous  sparrows in the NE corner of the Gardens.   With many of them juveniles, you can spend a challenging hour or two trying to separate striped upper breast young Chipping Sparrows from young Clay-colored from young Brewer's Sparrows from young Lincoln's Sparrows.  Or maybe it's a juvenile gambeli White-crowned.  And could that be a Field Sparrow, or was it just an immature leucophrys White-crowned?  Or was there some yellow around the eye to make it a Savannah?  (Today, it was even more challenging, as many were disheveled, feathers scattered and hiding usual ID marks). 

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R.J. Pautsch

427 Pearl St.

Boulder, CO  80302

rjpa...@gmail.com