Sparrow Me the Details

A Field Sparrow at La Chua trail at Paynes Prairie State Reserve

Something has long puzzled me about the popular portrayal of birders—and it's not our image as humorless, pith-helmet-wearing ninnies tiptoeing pretentiously across the savannah with binoculars nerdily jammed to our (generally pale and unattractive) faces. It's the baffling phenomenon in which writers, trying to sound as though they get what we're doing, always citing the phrase "little brown jobs". This term, they inform the reading public in a confidential whisper, is a central example of birdwatcher cant; it's what birdwatchers call all those plain little brown birds—such as sparrows—that nobody can tell apart.

There are a couple of problems with this: First, birders never actually say "little brown jobs". At least, in my five or so years of birding, I've never heard a serious birder say that. For that matter, I've never heard a casual or even a newbie birder say that. And I have no clue where people get the idea that we do.

The other falsehood behind the mysterious "little brown job" meme is this: While it's true that many birders find sparrows and some other small birds frustrating to ID, this is not because they are so plain. On the contrary, it's because sparrows have hellishly complex plumages, on tiny, fast-moving bodies. (This distinction is somehow lost on journalists with looming deadlines and no binoculars.) And the difference between a common yard bird and a rarity could be a tiny difference in color on exactly the part of the bird that's currently being obscured by a branch.

As some of my students would say, "That's SOOO unfair! How can you expect us to do something SOOO HARD??"

But this challenge is part of what makes birding so entrancing, even when it makes you want to rip your eyeballs out.

Here's an example: This, I'm pretty sure, is a Savannah Sparrow:

And this is a Song Sparrow. I think:

In a birding class I took back in California, I learned that a reliable way to tell Savannahs and Songs apart is that Savannahs have a yellowish wash on their "eyebrows", while the Songs have a solid gray color. This seems to hold for the birds pictured here. However, I learned from a reliable source that the Savannah Sparrows out here don't always have that yellowish wash above the eye.

The other common diagnostic for Song Sparrows is the presence of a dark spot in the center of the chest. However, my reliable source says this isn't a foolproof diagnostic, either; sometimes Song Sparrows lack it and other sparrows have it. The Savannah Sparrow above, for instance, seems to have a nice little splotch on its chest.

But—my sparrow-maven friend reminds me (and I keep forgetting)—tne thing that's unlikely to vary no matter what strange pose the bird hits is its overall shape and proportions. Here's another Savannah Sparrow; its tail looks noticeably shorter than that of the Song Sparrow:

Ergo, the second bird up is a Song Sparrow. Maybe.

Just to show that not all sparrows look alike, here's a Grasshopper Sparrow:

We saw this bird at Persimmon Point, just above the La Chua trail at Paynes Prairie State Reserve, a few weeks ago. Persimmon Point and La Chua are only a football field apart as the crow (or sparrow) flies, but the Grasshopper Sparrows are picky: they like the open grasslands at the former site, but not at the latter.

Sparrows used to be among the birds I gave myself the right to ignore because they were just too confusing. I'm still confused, but helped a bit by my realization that sparrows are just as varied and finicky about their surroundings as people. Swamp Sparrows, for instance, show up precisely where Grasshopper Sparrows don't: near the water's edge at La Chua. They look a little like Savannah and Song Sparrows. But they're not:

(Spring break has just begun, and I desperately need a break from the epic explain-a-thon that is my teaching life.)

And maybe this is where the "little brown job" thing came from: Some clever birder back in prehistory, tired of trying to explain the differences between sparrows to distracted reporters who just wanted sound bites, gave in and came up with a sound bite. And to his embarrassment, the sound bite stuck.

But it was better than rambling pointlessly on about the differences between Song and Savannah Sparrows, and looking like a total dork in print.

Birding Alone

Solitary birding can be either a huge rush or a frustrating pain in the butt. One one hand, I love it because it's fantastically soul-cleansing and relaxing, and it gives me the freedom to obsess over favorite places and birds without worrying about boring anyone.

On the other hand, there's something sad about seeing something really cool and having nobody to share it with. It's kind of like opening your Christmas presents by yourself. Then there's the problem of seeing something neat and unusual and having nobody believe you. I hate it when birds pull that Mr. Snuffleupagus routine.

And they tend to do that a lot.

Yesterday, they were having quite a time of it. Early yesterday morning, I ran a few short laps around Tanager Park in Costa Mesa. It's a tiny park, and a good spot to find Downy Woodpeckers, Northern Flickers, and Western Bluebirds, but it hasn't been very birdy as of late. But as I circled the park, I noticed a large, stocky, short-tailed bird on the lawn near some playground equipment: a Red-shouldered Hawk. It stayed on the ground briefly, then flew into one of the small trees near the footpath.

He was perched only about 7 feet off the ground, so I got a really close look at him as I ran past the tree. This surprised me, since the Red-shouldered Hawks I've seen so far have been fearful of people and seemed to perch as high off the ground as possible. Glenn has been trying since forever to get a close-up photo of one of them, but the mere sight of a camera lens 25 yards away is enough to send them flapping off into the ether.

Glenn would have loved this. But of course, he wasn't there.

After lunch, I headed to San Joaquin to give a tour of the marsh to a visiting conference group. They couldn't have chosen a worse time to look for birds: 2:30 in the afternoon in mid-August. Before we set out, I warned them that what we would see wouldn't be representative of the full diversity of bird life in the Marsh. And that it would be hot and uncomfortable.

Still, even the usual suspects in the marsh are fun to watch, and surprising and exotic to non-birders. (Every time I give a tour, I remember how beautiful and elegant-looking American Avocets and Black-necked Stilts really are.) A five-second sighting of one of the resident bobcats was an added bonus. But on the whole, the marsh was quiet, almost sterile. The trees were silent and empty....

... until after the tour ended and the conference-goers took off. After filling out the required paperwork in the Audubon House, I decided to take another spin around the marsh by myself. And of course, NOW a flock of Song Sparrows and a pair of Spotted Towhees were scratching gleefully in the middle of the path. And an Osprey was perched on a pole by the ponds near the entrance. And the female Wood Duck was back where I saw her last week. And a female Hooded Oriole was calling and jumping about in the trees in front of the Audubon House.

And there was nobody to show this to, and since I didn't bring a camera, no way of documenting it.

I hate it when this happens.