>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.

>Teresa Michelsen
----------

Teresa, I'm sure you saw young white-crowns, which can be quite common
without any adults present. In fact, on several occasions I have seen pure
or mixed flocks that contained adults of one subspecies (pugetensis) and
immatures of the other (gambelii) that winters in western WA. The painting
in the NGS guide (does anyone use anything else nowadays?) is *very*
misleading, portraying a bird that to me looks enough like a female House
Sparrow that it is entirely useless. The painting in Peterson's western
guide is somewhat better but still doesn't quite capture it.

If you want to see what an immature white-crown actually looks like, check
p. 271 in vol. 3 of the Audubon Society Master Guide to Birding. The
illustration there looks very much like a first-winter (but *not* a
juvenile, as the caption claims) white-crown, not surprising considering
it's a photograph. Note the dark lateral crown stripe is actually quite
reddish-brown, that the central crown stripe might not be visible in some
views (if it were a little above you), thus the crown could look entirely
reddish, and that the back of the head is somewhat peaked (quite
characteristic yet not shown by NGS or Peterson). The entirely yellow to
orange bill is diagnostic for white-crown and affords an easy distinction
from golden-crown if you can't see the head pattern well.

An adult chipping sparrow has a white supercilium and a black eyeline
(rather than gray and brown, respectively), coupled with its chestnut
crown. It also has a dark bill and is much smaller than a white-crown, with
body size smaller than any of the other sparrows normally seen up there.
There are also occasional American tree sparrows on the flats, so a bird
with a spot on the breast could be that species, but there's also the
possibility of feather bases showing on the breast. The spot is right where
the breast is indented (in the furcula [fused clavicles, wishbone]), and
sometimes birds have a "bad feather day." Tree sparrows are smaller than
white-crowns and larger than chippings.

Your attempt to identify these birds, quite thorough and careful but (I
suspect) incorrect, really points out in a big way the difficulty of this
process. Even with all the attention paid to bird ID, high-quality
binoculars, good field guides (and even, occasionally, cooperative birds),
it still is a challenge!

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