A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Spiza americana
I believe these shots are of a mated pair - the first two photos being the male and the 3rd the female - OR, they are not sexual dimorphic and rather, the smaller one is a juvenile. As they were pretty close together and may have been tending to a ground nest I could not see, I'm betting on the former rather than the later. These are some sort of finch/sparrow I had not seen before, in a multi-acre field in Scurry, TX.
Tall dry grass/reeds in open field.
Thanks! I was fortunate to have a nice lens that I borrowed - a 200mm 2.8 L lens from Canon... this was shot from my car. I don't think I could have gotten much closer to this bird. They were pretty shy.
Thanks so much for the ID. I had no idea I was seeing the 'drab' version and that their plumage would be so robustly colored. So many birds in this area that I've never seen before in my life - but they're far more skittish here in the country and hard to photograph.
Yep, male in first two pics, female in the last one. It's great to see they're back.
Spotted on May 27, 2011
Submitted on Mar 27, 2012
+2
