Hello, Birders. There was a wonderful Spizella sparrow flight in the later part of the overnight hours earlier "today." I heard the first little flight call at 2:59, and they kept at it all the way until 5:00 a.m. when I went back in.
I assumed they were all Chipping Sparrows, but when I was looking at the sound spectrograms a bit later in the morning, while feeding the loud cat and getting the kids ready for soccer (do we live in an age of multi-tasking or what), I noticed that a few apparent Brewer's Sparrows had snuck in. I say "apparent" Brewer's Sparrows because I'm not sure--I doubt anybody's sure--of the overlap between Chipping and Brewer's. The passage was straight east, the whole time. I.e., I would hear a flight call to the west, then overhead, then to the east. Oh, and if I didn't already have West Nile Virus, I probably do now: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/west-nile-virus-colorado_n_3678391.html If you're looking for the perfect excuse to witness the glorious midsummer night flight of Chipping Sparrows over Colorado's Front Range region, here ya go: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance Scroll down to "Saturday, August 3," although, as you can see from the text, they really mean "Sunday, August 4." Along with practically the whole solar system, you get a bunch of fantastic deep sky objects, readily viewed through decent binoculars. Plus sparrows migrating over. I can't imagine anything else I'd rather be doing at 4am Sunday morning! (Thanks to Bob Zilly for this tip.) Ted Floyd [email protected] Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/BAY177-W29D9F3FCEC6279E7D23FE1C0500%40phx.gbl. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
