To test my identification skills, today I took a look at a female bird on the feeder and said to myself "Shoot or no-shoot". I identified it as being a HOSP.
I took another long hard look at the bird, and committed the mental image to memory.
A quick search on the net revealed that I was incorrect. HOSP's, especially the females, can be quite difficult to identify. I had no idea that the males change color depending upon the season. Being that it pops up every now and then, I thought I would share a link to some pretty good photos of commonly misidentified sparrows.
If you have other links or photos, please share them. We all want to be on the right side of the law, and we certainly don't want to be harming our lovely songbirds.
Scroll down to the middle of the page for HOSP identification:
http://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/birds/commonly-confused-birds#sparrows
Here are some pretty good photos of both male and female HOSP:
http://www.sialis.org/hospphotos.htm
Cheers!
I took another long hard look at the bird, and committed the mental image to memory.
A quick search on the net revealed that I was incorrect. HOSP's, especially the females, can be quite difficult to identify. I had no idea that the males change color depending upon the season. Being that it pops up every now and then, I thought I would share a link to some pretty good photos of commonly misidentified sparrows.
If you have other links or photos, please share them. We all want to be on the right side of the law, and we certainly don't want to be harming our lovely songbirds.
Scroll down to the middle of the page for HOSP identification:
http://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/birds/commonly-confused-birds#sparrows
Here are some pretty good photos of both male and female HOSP:
http://www.sialis.org/hospphotos.htm
Cheers!
