Fox Sparrow!
Sunday 25 October 2015
60 °F
Before talking about the aforementioned bird that was the highlight of my day, here are some travel plans I have: Sax-Zim Bog (winter birding mecca) in northern Minnesota with my aunt and uncle during Christmas Break (definite; my Amtrak ticket has been bought - this is the trip shown on the above map), Cuba & the Dominican Republic with my choir next June (rather tentative), and possibly even Colombia on a Majestic Feathers birding tour next July (very tentative)! Colombia is the country with the largest bird list on the planet, over 1,800 species, which is nearly twice as many birds as in the USA and Canada combined!
Anyway, back to birding much closer to home...today, Marcus, a neighbor who is also a casual birder, came by with a stunned Fox Sparrow which had collided with their window. Thankfully, he released it after showing it to me and it immediately flew away. I found the tree where it landed and snapped this photo of it because this is the first Fox Sparrow I have ever seen in Oak Park, the 112th species for my Oak Park list!
Migration is continuing here in Illinois, and although I don't run Oak Park Bird Walks this far into the fall due to colder temperatures, raptor, waterfowl, and sparrow migration is really picking up in many locations throughout the state! Get out to your local grassland or body of water to see some of these late-migration specialties.
So this resilient Fox Sparrow will be my bird-of-the-day today. While school and musical commitments are very demanding this semester, I may not be posting very frequently, but I'm certainly very excited for my trip up to the Sax-Zim Bog after Christmas!
Good birding,
Henry
World Life List: 865 Species (no recent life birds)
What a cool experience! They are such beautiful sparrows. It must be even more amazing up close like that, especially knowing it survived a window collision. Too many birds die that way. I had a goldfinch strike one of my windows recently, and it was amazing to be able to get so close to it before it flew off.
Have fun in Minnesota!
by Jonathan Bontrager