{"id":541,"date":"2009-11-07T09:38:35","date_gmt":"2009-11-07T15:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=541"},"modified":"2009-11-07T09:38:35","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T15:38:35","slug":"first-of-season-winter-sparrows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=541","title":{"rendered":"First-of-Season Winter Sparrows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Forgot to mention yesterday that though I had heard a White-crowned Sparrow call in the yard a few days ago, I hadn&#8217;t spotted one until yesterday evening, up in the dry woods.\u00a0 I came into the south end of the dry woods trail and startled some White-winged doves, who flapped off with their usual noisy behavior, but one smaller bird just hopped to the top of a cactus and sat there.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-544\" title=\"white-crowned_sparrow198\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/white-crowned_sparrow198.jpg\" alt=\"white-crowned_sparrow198\" width=\"234\" height=\"302\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/white-crowned_sparrow198.jpg 234w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/white-crowned_sparrow198-232x300.jpg 232w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 234px) 100vw, 234px\" \/><!--more-->It was a White-crowned Sparrow, and as I moved slowly closer the rest of its flock came out to look at me&#8211;about 15-20 of them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This photo is from a few years ago&#8211;I didn&#8217;t get one yesterday, but this bird is very near to where I saw the birds yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>So our winter visitor sparrows will be coming in over the next few weeks, if they&#8217;re not already hiding out somewhere in the brush.\u00a0\u00a0 I think I&#8217;ve also heard a White-throated and maybe a Lincoln&#8217;s, but nary a sight of them so far.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We get about eight species of winter-resident sparrows every year, some preferring the creek woods , some the dry woods and a few the grassland.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s time to start the winter supplemental feeding.\u00a0 Our bird population at least triples in winter, and they all arrive hungry.\u00a0\u00a0 Since we were in an extreme drought situation until September&#8217;s rains, the local summer-resident and year-round wildlife have already eaten up all the native food sources (no dried grapes left on the vines, no prickly-pear fruit on the cactus) and only some of the grasses have produced fresh seed since then.\u00a0\u00a0 Depending on usage and apparent local food supply, I&#8217;ll be supplementing at least until the winter residents leave and spring migration is past&#8230;the last couple of years we&#8217;ve also supplemented (with a different mix of feeds) through the nesting and fledging season as well.<\/p>\n<p>It usually takes them a week or two to settle in and make their routines of watering and feeding so I can predict which will be where when.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forgot to mention yesterday that though I had heard a White-crowned Sparrow call in the yard a few days ago, I hadn&#8217;t spotted one until yesterday evening, up in the dry woods.\u00a0 I came into the south end of the dry woods trail and startled some White-winged doves, who flapped off with their usual noisy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,4],"tags":[71,8,22,23,70,30],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activities","category-wildlife","tag-activities","tag-bird-behavior","tag-census","tag-observation","tag-photography","tag-wildlife-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}