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the sparrows is in Mexico and Central America. Its plumage is, after molting, brown with only hints of blue. I don’t suppose feeders are common in Mexico where the birds spend the winter months. There is plenty of natural food in the tropics where winter never comes.
Ann Brown of Millwood reads the column in the Clarke Courier. She observed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows at her feeder on Oct. 18. Her card was mailed on Oct. 28 and she wrote she had not seen these two birds since Oct. 18. No doubt her sightings were of birds stopping over for food on their way farther south. Her residents birds will appear later; indeed they may already be there.
If Juncos and Whitethroated Sparrows had been banded last winter, it can be reasonably expected they would return to the same yard and feeder this fall. These winter residents are attached to summer nesting in New England and Canada and winter feeding territories in Virginia as if by a rubber band. They turn up with regularity at both places year after year.
I heard my first Whitethroated Sparrow of the year on Oct. 20 at Bull’s Island National Wildlife Refuge off the coast near Charleston, S.C. For six years Lee Trott and I have conducted Nature Week from a small inn on Pawleys Island.
Its always an exciting week of bird sightings with enthusiastic bird watchers. Our total for the week was 103 species of birds.
We returned late yesterday, Oct. 30, after a long drive back into glorious fall color. South Carolina was still green. Today I will go to the Post Office to pick up the mail that has accumulated since we left on Oct. 17. I suspect there will be more reports of “snowbird” and White-throated Sparrows sightings.
I’m mighty glad to be back among the woods and hills of Virginia.
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