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Project Noah Nature School
Zonotrichia albicollis
The little golden-crown sparrows are probably our most prevalent wintertime visitors. They seem to especially enjoy the camera. In the spring, their calls sound very much like human whistling!
Dry hills, chaparrall
These cuties mugged for the camera!
Spotted on Apr 17, 2009
Submitted on Sep 26, 2011
2 Comments
I'm not sure, Emma, but I really think that it has to do with precise environmental conditions. For instance: Where we live, it's on a hill where the landlord's house is about 150 ft. lower down the driveway than our house and I have seen the little cedar waxwings many times in the curly willow and toyon at his house but have never seen them around our house. At the bottom of the driveway (which is in the Alexander Valley), you can see blackbirds just about everywhere but they never come up as far as either his house or our house. Where we used to live in Sebastopol (about 50 miles away), I saw chickadees and white-crowned sparrows all the time but you won't find them anywhere around Cloverdale. The most plentiful raptor in Sebastopol is the red-shouldered hawk but, around here, it's the red-tailed hawk and you won't find any red-shouldered hawks at all. I think, like plants, the fauna restrict themselves to environments where the food they've come to rely upon is most plentiful and there's quite a bit of difference in what kinds of seeds, fruits, etc. one finds in abundance in the foggy, damp, colder lowlands closer to the coast than what one finds in the dryer, hotter, inland environments.
@ Jean ,these are unusual. How is it that we do not live that far off from each other and yet i have not seen these?