The vultures in my Phoenix backyard like to wreak havoc, creating pandemonium every time I try to feed a couple of my favorite birds. No sooner does the coy cardinal or the lame house finch procure one of my meager offerings of sunflower seeds than do hoards of mourning doves and house sparrows clamorously swoop down to swipe most of the kernels. It's a precise choreography of timing and placement for me to call my targeted efforts any kind of success.
This feeding frenzy includes other birds, most notably towhees, thrashers, and white-crowned sparrows, the latter a regular winter migrant to my neighborhood. In some very recent melees I noticed another seasonal visitor - a Lincoln's sparrow - making some stealthy appearances in the crowd.
He never hovers or lurks expectantly, rather he darts quickly from the cover of the overflowing bougainvillea above the garden wall or from behind a potted cactus. His flitting forays through the chaos seem calculated and strategic: a mission to retrieve a morsel and return to headquarters, wherever they might be.
The Lincoln's sparrow looked mostly like just another house finch or house sparrow in the few brief glimpses I initially caught: another small, plainly colored and marked bird. Luckily I succeeded in photographing him on my third or fourth attempt and was able to use the shots for a positive identification.
He wasn't the first member of his species I documented visiting my backyard. An individual spent a few weeks there in both the early spring of 2018 and then again in 2019. I wrote back then that one reappeared almost like clockwork just as the days were growing noticeably longer and warmer.
However in 2020 the sparrow was a no show; maybe he figured out a way to avoid all the trial and tribulations of that tumultuous year! And now, at the very start of January 2021, in the dead of a desert winter, one has reappeared - early by my reckoning, but here nonetheless. Maybe he's a reminder that the clock is still trying to keep time, off a little, but still ticking.
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| Backyard Lincoln's sparrow, January 2021. |
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| Backyard Lincoln's sparrow, January 2021. |
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