Not that I live in junco habitat but sometimes I get a small flock in the winter. 2023 only saw one Gray-headed at the feeders in December for about 5 minutes. As I suspect a horrible year for sparrows of any kind here (except for the daily pair of Rufous-winged).
Most of ours are slate colored. I think some look like your pic of the Oregon dark headed but I don’t know how to tell? I swear sometime ago somebody told me to just look for pink, and if there was something different here it would have pink. I’ve never seen that. The males and females do look a little different too I think?
Sounds right...the gray-headed, Oregon, and pink-sided all have some degree of pink on their flanks. You might be getting white-winged along with the slate-colored, which would be awesome. Looking at the range maps, you should be getting all the forms except red-backed. Good luck! (Slate-colored do show some difference between male and female--the others not so much...)
Lincoln's showed up very early in migration then disappeared entirely. Same with Green-tailed Towhee. I usually have several of them all winter. The only common sparrow in the Dragoons (St. David CBC 12/23) was Vesper. It's usually Chipping and Brewer's, the former by the dozens. Only ONE Chipping and NO Brewer's! Odd year.
Not that I live in junco habitat but sometimes I get a small flock in the winter. 2023 only saw one Gray-headed at the feeders in December for about 5 minutes. As I suspect a horrible year for sparrows of any kind here (except for the daily pair of Rufous-winged).
I saw ten gray-headed this morning...but yes, very lean on the sparrow count. Haven't seen our Lincoln's in a while.
I’m going to have to start looking closer at the juncos, just in case!
I thought of you as I wrote this post! Juncos and more juncos!
Most of ours are slate colored. I think some look like your pic of the Oregon dark headed but I don’t know how to tell? I swear sometime ago somebody told me to just look for pink, and if there was something different here it would have pink. I’ve never seen that. The males and females do look a little different too I think?
Sounds right...the gray-headed, Oregon, and pink-sided all have some degree of pink on their flanks. You might be getting white-winged along with the slate-colored, which would be awesome. Looking at the range maps, you should be getting all the forms except red-backed. Good luck! (Slate-colored do show some difference between male and female--the others not so much...)
Lincoln's showed up very early in migration then disappeared entirely. Same with Green-tailed Towhee. I usually have several of them all winter. The only common sparrow in the Dragoons (St. David CBC 12/23) was Vesper. It's usually Chipping and Brewer's, the former by the dozens. Only ONE Chipping and NO Brewer's! Odd year.