Savannah Sparrow

One of the other birds we got to see when we were in Watkins Glen, and photograph for the first time, was a Savannah Sparrow. Actually, there was two that we saw, within about a minute of each other. Both were perched on fence posts along the road, just a couple of hundred metres apart, in the middle of open fields. We were driving along, and normally we wouldn't even stop for a nondescript bird such as this perched near the side of the road, but we're glad we did.


The Savannah Sparrow is fairly easily recognizable among other similar sparrows because of the yellow above its eye. It had a very pretty song, but unfortunately we were unable to get a video of it.


According to our Sibley guide, the Savannah Sparrow is "common and widespread in open grassy or weedy habitats", and "in most areas the most numerous streaked sparrow, and the one most likely to be seen in open areas, either on the ground or perched on top of weeds or fences" - which certainly matches what we saw.


A nice addition to our list!
-posted by Dave-