that was flowering but kept getting chased off by a warbler who seemed to want the plant for its own. I thought at first it might be a common yellowthroat, but later views made it clear it wasn't --
might be a yellow-rump, but it seemed wrong for that.
Female common yellowthroat. I gotta stop thinking all the birds in the universe are male... (grin)
sparrow fly by and pose for me -- it turned out to be a very (very very) dark sooty fox sparrow.
Al Eisner pointed out this would be really early for this bird and suggested blackbird. I'd ruled out blackbird based on beak shape -- but I went and took another look, and it has black legs, so it's a blackbird, not a sparrow. My bad, that's one I should have caught, but it seemed to be acting like a sparrow and the beak looks like a sparrow -- but I went to flickr to do more research, and the young birds have that thicker, sparrow-like bill until they grow into it, so I guess I'll take that (again) as a reminder that there's more to birding than what Sibley's shows...
Thanks to Al for the hint!
--
Chuq Von Rospach
([[email protected]];
http://chuqui.typepad.com)