Hi all,
Has anyone else noticed a glut of Harris's Sparrows in southeastern
Minnesota this spring? In previous years, I've felt lucky to find 1 or
2 in a season. This year, I'm seeing them everywhere. Out of the last
6 days, I've seen small groups of them on 4 days, all in different
locations, including this evening right outside my house in south
Minneapolis.
A friend of mine noted that he'd been seeing a lot of them as well, in
areas where he usually doesn't. He also pointed out that there are a
lot of white-lored White-crowned Sparrows around (presumably the western
subspecies /gambelii/). I don't know the normal frequency of
white-lored (mostly /gambelii/) vs. dark-lored (mostly /leucophrys/)
White-crowns in Minnesota, but it does make intuitive sense that
Harris's would more frequently hang out with the western ones. As one
small anecdote, the one flock I got a good look at on Sunday had 3
Harris's and 2 white-lored White-crowns.
Good birding,
Matt Dufort
----
Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net
Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
