10/19/2018 - 10/21/2018
The weather has finally cooled down and the little brown birds are finally moving into the state in numbers. Sparrow Season has begun, in earnest.
I started Friday morning for a couple hours before heading into work. Ritchey Woods Nature Preserve in Fishers, Indiana has had a good prairie area in years past. Unfortunately, the prairie has gotten away from them and is getting fairly far along into shrubland. The sparrows don't mind; although it makes photographing them a bit more difficult. There were a lot of Field Sparrows and one cooperative White-throated Sparrow.
Saturday was predicted to have extremely high winds. That's not good for birding.... Luckily, they held off until the afternoon; so, I was able to get some more "brown bird" hunting in. Daubenspeck has a much better prairie area, and it's not too far away either. "Brown birds" included: Swamp, Chipping, and Song Sparrows. A Dark-eyed Junco showed off it's brown colors, too, and even the goldfinch and Palm Warblers are starting to look pretty brown. At one point, all the birds disappeared and were replaced by another brown bird.
Sunday was the best weather day of the weekend. The weather was cool, and the winds were low. Time for a road trip to Goose Pond FWA. Not all of the little brown birds are brown. Some are orange!
October is prime season for LeConte's and Nelson's Sparrows. I met my brother at GP at sunrise. Somehow, we were lucky enough to park right next to an actively feeding LeConte's Sparrow. Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to get great pics of it. Swamp Sparrows were overly abundant. 50 might be an undercount. We also found a cooperative Savannah Sparrow for a few pics.
All in all, it was a good weekend. I hope next weekend goes as well. I only had a few misses for the weekend: Nelson's Sparrow, Lincoln's Sparrow, and White-crowned Sparrow will have to be targets for next weekend.
Thanks for reading, Mike
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