On a cool, softly-overcast day, the sun often breaking through high, many-layered clouds, a sparrow flew out of some weedy thickets in a field across the road in front of me as I walked \u2013 and perched near the top of a small bare tree along the roadside.<\/p>\n
I expected to see a White-throated Sparrow or maybe a Song Sparrow \u2013 but instead discovered a large, plump bird with a proud head and striking red-brown coloring, with contrasting dove-gray patterns on the head and face, red-brown wings, and white breast heavily spotted and streaked with red-brown. A Fox Sparrow.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t seen a Fox Sparrow in several years, but its vivid coloring and shape and behavior are familiar. It was like seeing an old friend because I used to see them often in the winter, when we lived in a different place in Oconee County. This is the first time I\u2019ve seen a Fox Sparrow here in this neighborhood. It stayed perched quietly in the little tree for maybe two or three minutes, giving me a good long look before it flew again, back across the road and out of sight in the shrubs of the field.<\/p>\n
Just as I turned around and started to walk away, a compact, sleek gray hawk with a long tail flew suddenly out of the trees behind me like a phantom and swooped low across the road, skimming the top of the weeds and shrubs, then flying up and a little higher and away toward the trees on the other side of the highway, in a crisp and distinctive flap-flap-flap \u2013 glide<\/em> pattern of flight \u2013 a Sharp-shinned Hawk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On a cool, softly-overcast day, the sun often breaking through high, many-layered clouds, a sparrow flew out of some weedy thickets in a field across the road in front of me as I walked \u2013 and perched near the top of a small bare tree along the roadside. I expected to see a White-throated Sparrow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}