A Trio of Sparrows for Valentine's Day

When today's Nor'easter hit, our bird feeder suddenly came alive with activity. It goes to show how vital supplemental feeding can be for winter birds. In addition to black-capped chickadees, tufted titmice, and white-breasted nuthatches, there was a sizable flock of dark-eyed juncos working the snowy ground under the feeder along with three white-throated sparrows.

Whitethroats are large sparrows, crisply plumaged with mottled brown upperparts, bold white stripes on the head, yellow lores (the area in front of the eye), mostly gray underparts, and clean white throats outlined in black.

When our girls went out to play in the snow, one of them left the door of our enclosed porch open, and then must have walked back toward the porch, shooing the three whitethroats inside. After a brief episode of the poor birds hurling themselves against the windows, I managed to gently pluck each one in turn from the windowsill and send them on their way.

Before I released the last one, Jenny took a nice picture of a bird in the hand for her blog.