Possible Dark-eyed Junco x Song Sparrow Hybrid

This afternoon I photographed an interesting DARK-EYED JUNCO in my yard in Logan, Cache County, Utah. The bird had most of the basic traits of a female Oregon subspecies Dark-eyed Junco, except for a few anomalies. Most obvious was a soft-edged buffy malar ("mustache") stripe that matched the flanks in color. I grabbed a few quick photographs through the window, but could not relocate the bird when I went outside to try for better photos. In the photographs, I noticed that the bird also has a hint of a pale supercilium ("eyebrow"), a slightly more striped back than expected (although perhaps not entirely outside the range of variation for a pure DEJU), and the white in the outer tail feathers appears to not reach the tip of the tail, instead fading to black.

The combination of anomalous traits make me think this is not just an aberration, but more likely a hybrid of some kind. Hybrids between DEJU and sparrows of the Zonotrichia and Melospiza genera have been previously reported. It seems to me like the best match for this bird would be a Dark-eyed Junco x Song Sparrow hybrid, a combination which has been reported before. (For example, here is a link to a possible photo of another DEJU x SOSP hybrid, and here is a link to an article describing another.) It is my opinion that the only way to be 100% certain of any hybrid parentage is with genetics, but I think this is the most likely explanation for this bird based on the traits observed, the frequency and range overlap between the species in question, and the fact that hybridization between these two has been documented previously. The Song Sparrow-like traits are pretty weak on this bird, so a backcross (the offspring of a mating between a pure DEJU and a DEJU x SOSP hybrid) also may be likely. Any thoughts or comments on this bird are welcome.

Feeder Stakeout

The feeder stakeout is probably familiar to all serious listers. (No, I'm not a serious lister.) Most of the birds birdwatchers see are probably at birdfeeders, so occassionally a rare bird will show up at a feeder and word spreads quickly. It is then the job of the lister to pretend they're a private investigator. He or she contacts the homeowner, then waits by the feeder for minutes, hours, or even days hoping that the target bird will eventually show up.

I did my first feeder stakeout yesterday, at the home of Alice Lindahl. She reported a Harris's Sparrow coming to her feeder, a bird that normally sticks to the central part of the country and is very rare in Utah. (An interesting aside: this is the only species in the world whose entire breeding range is in Canada.) So, yesterday after handing in my research proposal and giving a presentation to the dean of the college, I celebrated by sitting in Alice's living room window and watching her feeders. Thank god I caught her just as she was leaving and she was gracious enough to let me in. The weather outside was horrendous, with sleet, snow, freezing rain, and hard winds.

After about 20 or 30 minutes of practicing my Junco subspecies identification, the scruffy-looking star of the show finally arrived! (Photo above, bird at center.) Not bad for my first feeder stakeout, and a very tough-to-get bird in Cache County.

Yesterday I went snowshoeing at Beaver Mountain. Some friends had thought they saw a flock of Pine Grosbeaks up there a couple of weeks ago, so we were hoping to relocate them. Unfortunately, we didn't see anything too remarkable. Perhaps all the snowmobilers had chased off the good birds. The biggest surprise was a flock of California Gulls flying over, far from any open water or trash, and probably headed to Bear Lake. We did see three subspecies of Dark-eyed Junco (mostly Pink-sided with at least one Slate-colored and one Oregon), including one partial leucistic bird with white patches throughout its plumage. There were also one Ruby-crowned Kinglet flashing its crest and many Red-breasted Nuthatches (photo above) singing to each other.

Birding from Home

This morning John Weiss and I tried unsuccessfully to find the Northern Shrike that Craig Fosdick saw out in the valley yesterday. However, I still managed to get a new year bird today, despite spending the rest of the day working at home. I finally saw Pine Siskins at my feeder (upper left bird in the photo, with American Goldfinches and a Dark-eyed Junco), a species that should have been easy to find but which I somehow had missed until now.