Hi tweeters,

Saw 7 Caspian Terns, both adults and juveniles, at the Swinomish Channel at
hwy 20, Skagit Co., on Saturday, 10 October--seems a bit late to me.

Also greatly enjoyed an American Tree Sparrow in my yard yesterday, 11
October, in the north part of Seattle. A very exciting new bird for the
yard. It hung around throughout the afternoon and was still feeding at 6:30
p.m., as it was getting almost dark. I wondered if it weren't tanking up to
make another flight. Unfortunately, I'm not there during the daylight hours
during the week so won't know how long it stays unless it stays until next
weekend. I'd love it if it had found its final wintering spot, but I don't
think our fairly well-wooded neighborhood is optimal habitat for the
species. Tree Sparrow is somewhat of a misnomer, as it's common in open
shrubby country.

This bird is full of feather groups of various colors and patterns that
have to be scrutinized one by one to be appreciated--not that the whole
bird is anything less than beautiful. The back stripes are glowing buff and
black, the head stripes dark rufous and gray, with a characteristic rufous
touch on each side of the breast and that cute black spot in the middle.
Some of the tail feathers have vivid, although quite narrow, white outer
edges, contrasty enough that you can see them in flight, and it's easy to
see how the junco's white outer rectrices could have come from something
like this.

It finally dawned on me to be amazed by the fact that the stripes on
sparrow backs stop as if they ran into a brick wall at the anterior end of
the back (or posterior end of the neck). Why should that be? Why do the
back stripes extend up the neck in shorebirds but not in sparrows? They
both have the same feather tracts and both presumably use the camouflage in
the same way. We're no closer in answering questions of this sort than we
were in the days when the first shorebirds and sparrows were discovered and
named!

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html