"Red" Fox Sparrow, NW Corvallis
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Lisa Millbank
Dec 28, 2014, 7:30:09 PM12/28/14
to Mid-valley Nature
Tom Olson and Carrie Burkholder sent me some photos (attached) of an
unusual Fox Sparrow who has been visiting their feeder recently.
It appears to belong to the "Red Fox Sparrow" group, which consists of two subspecies. Both subspecies typically winter from Texas to the Atlantic coast, and are notably rare in the West.
I've seen a few photos of our typical wintering "Sooty Fox Sparrows" with unusually reddish plumage (like this one, from this article). But, these unusually red individuals don't seem to have the distinctive facial pattern of the "Red" group. I don't know too much about eastern Fox Sparrows and find some of the distinctions to be fairly subtle when these individual variations come into play.
I also attached a picture of a "Sooty" Fox Sparrow for comparison. This one's a little redder than many of them. Many are even more uniformly chocolate brown, with a reddish-brown rump and tail.
Lisa Millbank
www.neighborhood-naturalist.com
It appears to belong to the "Red Fox Sparrow" group, which consists of two subspecies. Both subspecies typically winter from Texas to the Atlantic coast, and are notably rare in the West.
I've seen a few photos of our typical wintering "Sooty Fox Sparrows" with unusually reddish plumage (like this one, from this article). But, these unusually red individuals don't seem to have the distinctive facial pattern of the "Red" group. I don't know too much about eastern Fox Sparrows and find some of the distinctions to be fairly subtle when these individual variations come into play.
I also attached a picture of a "Sooty" Fox Sparrow for comparison. This one's a little redder than many of them. Many are even more uniformly chocolate brown, with a reddish-brown rump and tail.
Lisa Millbank
www.neighborhood-naturalist.com
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