Sing for your supper

excellent shot, beautiful bird

I need to get out the bird book to ID this one. Suggestions/comments

are appreciated.

my suggestion: White-crowned sparrow. Regards, Dieter

Song Sparrow

Could have sworn the bill is yellow.

Leroy, I'm about to hijack your thread here, and I apologize for it. If YOU want further ID justification I'll gladly post it here...For cying out loud, Dieter, even if the bill appears yellow on your monitor (it doesn't on my calibrated monitor: it appears to be roughly the same shade of gray as the supercilium & cheek area--typical of every race of Song Sparrow), have you you ever seen a White-crown with streaked breast and flanks? Do you ever allow for the effect of sun angle on reflective surfaces (like bird bills)-- which makes them appear darker or lighter? One learns to read these things with experience. For a guy who didn't know a Blue Jay from a Scrub Jay three months ago you post an awful lot of guesses on PN about bird IDs, many of them badly wrong. If you want to pursue this further please email me direct so we don't occupy any more of Leroy's space.

Thanks, Gordon. Appreciate your advice and will neither post guesses on bird IDs nor images of birds standing around doing nothing anymore. Hope to find a birder or two in this area that can teach me and have me gain experience. And yes, I have seen juvenile white-crowned sparrows with streaks, but then the head is different.

Point taken, Dieter, I myself have not seen a juvenile (pre 1st winter) WcSp with streaked breast & flanks after Sept, but there are some records of such individuals into Nov. Should have said, "Have you ever seen in March..."