White-throated Sparrow
Also on October 20, I first heard a few broken pieces of clear, sweet song from White-throated Sparrows in the old field along the highway, announcing their arrival. And when I got back home from walking, there were two White-throated Sparrows scratching in leaf litter below some bushes in our yard – plump, handsome, cleanly marked sparrows, with grayish breast, cinnamon and black-streaked back and wings, dark crowns, white stripe through the eye, a dab of deep yellow above the bill, and the bright white crisply-outlined throats for which they are named. I felt absurdly happy and pleased to find them here, in our own yard, somehow reassuring simply in their return and their presence. Since then, I’ve heard their tseet calls from weeds and thickets and shrubs all through the neighborhood.