Alrighty, y'all, what everybody's been wondering about for the past 48 hours . . .
So . . . Every guess here at COBirds was wrong, although two late entrants got the bird in the right family. Over at Facebook, all the guesses were likewise wrong, with nobody even getting the mystery songster to the right family. I am aware of guesses from the following avian families: Scolopacidae (sandpipers) Tyrannidae (flycatchers) Corvidae (crows, jays) Turdidae (thrushes, robins) Mimidae (catbirds, thrashers, mockingbirds) Fringillidae (finches) Icteridae (blackbirds) Passerellidae (sparrows) Parulidae (warblers) So who got it in the right family? Donald Jones and Maureen Blackford. Good job! However, the bird wasn’t a song sparrow. Folks wrote to me offline, too, and one of them got it all the way to species. Our winner is . . . Christian Nunes, who correctly recognized this as the song of the endlessly protean *spotted towhee.*While I have you, here’s how the saga unfolded on my end. When I first heard the song, at some distance, I wondered if the bird was going to be a blue jay. We have this whack-job blue jay at Waneka who frequently imitates Swainson hawks, ospreys, I believe, and maybe even red-winged blackbirds. So, for those of who thought it was a blue jay: Same here. But, then, as I got closer, I started to semi-seriously consider the possibility that this was going to be Colorado’s second rufous-collared sparrow—and the third for the east flank of the Rockies in the USA. So I was in the right family—of course with that intangible yet critical advantage of actually being in the field with the bird. Finally, as I neared the bird, which I eventually saw up close and personal, something clicked, and I was pretty sure it was going to be a spotted towhee. Again, the imponderable essence of being there. Thanks to all of you for playing along, and congrats to Christian. Next time I see you in person, I owe you a bottle of kombucha and a sack of orange slices. Ted Floyd Lafayette, Boulder County -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/a4e384e4-5374-4d15-b835-f17d0788ed25o%40googlegroups.com.
