I'm lousy at identifying sparrows, too! I always seem to notice things that
don't mesh with what shows up in the guide books, after taking into account
the fact that the guidebooks don't come close to showing the phenotypic
variability within a species or genus, especially the inherently more
variable ones. A few weeks ago I saw a sparrow at Reifel that was quite
nondescript (from my point of view) except that the base of its bill was
yellow. Nowhere in any of my guidebooks is this trait listed as a feature of
any particular sparrow species.
So my letter has two purposes: empathy and can anyone solve the yellow-based
bill mystery?
Steve