Dennis: Thanks for your comment. We agonized over this ID for a long time,
and were far from certain at the end. There were many of these sparrows,
and nothing that looked anything like a white-crowned sparrow. Would there
have been so many immatures without any adults?? (If so, what do the
immatures look like?) These birds were pale grey on the breast with a wide,
bright rufous crown. One bird seemed to have a crease or black dot on its
breast, none of the others did. The head was somewhat flat-looking with no
apparent stripes. The beak appeared yellow. The back and tail were fairly
nondescript brown/gray, with one wing bar. Everyone in the group saw them
clearly in the sun, and searched through both Peterson's and Nat. Geo.
Nothing looked quite right... the theory was that it was a chipping sparrow
between summer and winter plumage, but I'd have to say that no-one on the
trip was really certain (an unusual occurrance, I'd say). Perhaps if you
run into Kent or Marilyn tonight at WOS, you could ask them.
----------
From: tweeters
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: sparrows on the flats
Date: Mon, Dec 5, 1994 1:47PM

As a self-elected watchdog of the ornithological scene, I'm forced
(arggghh, stop twisting my arm....) to comment on this sentence from a
recent posting about the Skagit Flats:

"Large flocks of sparrows were everywhere in the brambly field margins,
those we observed contained ubiquitous song sparrows along with good
numbers of chipping sparrows and a few Lincoln's and golden-crowned
sparrows."

A chipping sparrow would be a very unusual find on the Skagit Flats in
winter (or at any time of year, for that matter). I wonder if those
chipping sparrows could have been immature white-crowns?

Dennis Paulson phone: (206)
756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416