Serendipitous Sparrow or Jimmy Crack Corn Part Deux (03-04Mar2015)

More times than not the best birds are the happy accidents that were not preplanned.  Yesterday I had a flight in the early morning to go to Nebraska for work which I was actually looking forward to because I was hoping I would get a couple hours to search the Platte River Basin for some goodies.  Unfortunately my flight and many of the subsequent flights were canceled due to fog.  So from the airport I decided to cheer myself up by checking Sutton Lake.  I didn't have anything in mind, but I was close so it was not hard to convince myself to check it before going back to work.

Downy Woodpecker - This picture is actually from Halliburton Park on Tuesday.

Vesper Sparrow at Sutton Lake - this was the first group of birds I ran into and I immediately knew they were Vespers.  4 of them!!!  You can see white outer tail feathers and diagnostic auriculars (cheek feathers).  I have heard that Sutton has a good population of Vespers but this is the first time I saw them.  All 4 of them sat in a row on the barb wire.  Unfortunate those shots were very bad due to bad light but at least I got some serviceable shots of one bird.

Osprey - first of the year, at the lake proper.

Then I saw a sight for sore eyes, my good buddy Jimmy with his cracked corn.  For those of you that don't remember this is a man that drives the dirt road to Sutton Lake every day and chucks handfuls of cracked corn out his window.  His primary purpose is to give his dog some exercise as he is too old to walk with his dog and therefor he drives while his dog walks.

It was not long before many more sparrows showed up.

Swamp Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Eastern Towhee

Gray Catbird

Northern Cardinal - duh!

Field Sparrow on right side.

Savannah Sparrow

Sometimes Chipping sparrows can try to fool you, this one was doing his best Clay Colored impression which could have fooled me a couple years ago.

Plus it is easy to not be confused when the immature or female birds are hanging out with a bunch of mature ones.

Field Sparrow

Field, Savannah and Chipping in one picture.  The Field sparrow was levitating he was so happy to see Jimmy.

Great times.  And the best thing is I had to reschedule the Nebraska trip and the site wants me to come on week of March 19 which is actually much better for displaying Prairie Chickens.