Color Me Rufous

Wow, hard to believe we are almost through April already. Pages are flying off the calendar and I have sooo much to do. Someday I have to figure out the formula that allowed me to get all my tasks done while I was still grinding out days in the corporate world. To Brad’s credit he likes to point out that my time is now filled doing things I enjoy vs hunting bad spirits in the machine and filling out TPS reports. I can’t deny my time devoted to travel and birding has increased significantly and thanks to that, I am proud to say I have officially shattered my all-time Average Year record (link here). I tried to get all the numbers up to date, but I’ve hit it hard these last couple of days so that page is already off. My record (from 2023) was 340 species – as of today it sits at 352+3 putting me at 168th in the US and 8th in my county. Placements are fluctuating all over the place depending on where you are in relation to the migration so those rankings are a bit fluid. I also refreshed my life list count and even updated the counter on the left nav bar. It is rare when that is accurate, but for now 472 is correct! Brad is right, birding is definitely better than IT Enterprise Architecture ha!

The key part of those bird counts is the increased travel – in particular our monthly trips to the southwest. Today’s featured feathered friend comes courtesy of last year’s trip to Tucson, Arizona. Now, this specimen is going to be a bit hmmmm, how to put this … let’s go with a letdown from our recent offerings. We’ve tried to bring you a colorful assortment of avian fodder as of late to help make up for the lack of excitement that is coming your way …but before then…another dose of color!

Okay, now gather your wits, lower your expectations, prepare for the worst and hit that jump (might help if you close one eye before you do that).

Well, I can’t delay it any longer and in my defense you willingly hit the jump so here it is…

I can hear it now “What the hell Bri, it’s a g!#@$!%m SPARROW!!”. I know, I know, I know, but honestly, it has to happen sometime, there are just too many of these Little Brown Jobbers not to throw a seven once in a while and crap one out. Soak in the grays, whites, blacks, tans, dark browns, light browns, medium browns, pale browns, dull browns, sharp browns, brilliant browns, diluted browns and dashes of gaudy browns thrown in with subtle browns. Oh, almost forgot …. and RUFOUS.

You certainly do not have to travel all the way to Tucson, Arizona to witness that color palette in a bird. In fact, I am willing to bet on the Pass Line that you could walk out of your house any day of the year and have that assortment of colors fly right past you. You may acknowledge it, you may even mentally take the time to ID it based on whatever subset of Sparrows roam your area, but I doubt you will rush to immortalize it in a digital image. Now, there is a specific situation that does warrant additional excitement and that is when you are in a new region and the Merlin app pops up the possibility of a lifer!

That is exactly the situation here. First, I’ll set the stage. Ron came out to join us for a week of birding while we were out in Tucson, AZ. One of the spots we selected to explore was a place called Catalina State Park just west of Mount Lemon (link here). I have to say, that place quickly made it into my top 10 birding locations. They have several trails that weave through various habitats including desert wash, foothill trails, mesquite bosque and riparian, with plenty of Saguaro to enjoy. We had only devoted a half day to this spot and barely had enough time to make it around their 1 mile designated birding trail and then a short way up their more difficult Romero Canyon Trail. Needless to say, the next opportunity we’ll be spending a LOT more time there.

A short distance on the birding trail we noticed several Sparrows frolicking in the brush and bouncing out from time to time to peck in the dirt on the trail ahead of us. My first thought was Chipping Sparrow or possibly a Field Sparrow with the pinkish bill – nothing to warrant bringing The Beast on point. That changed when Merlin flashed “Rufous-Winged Sparrow”. I had completely forgot we were far from home – Ron and I looked at each and got to work!

In general, the various Sparrow species are abundant across the US. As examples, the Chipping variety map looks like they dumped a paint can on the map of the US and even the less dispersed Field Sparrow easily covers the entire eastern region. This specific sparrow is quite the opposite as they are year round residents in a small section of southern Arizona and then down along the west coast of Central America. Lifers for the both us. I am sure the Pyrrhuloxi (link here) and Green-Tailed Towhees in the area were thinking “Look at the stupid tourists taking pictures of those drabby Sparrows!”. I’ll admit it, it felt like an Elegant Trogon for us Midwesterners ha (link here).

If you have spent any time on Intrigued up to now, you are probably aware I have a tendency to go off on bad bird names. The most annoying of those are ones named after field markings you can’t actually detected… IN THE FIELD. That can be the case with the Rufous-Winged as the rufous spot on their wings is not always visible. You can validate that by actually looking for it in the previous 5 images. We did eventually get a few glimpses of it – the first shot shows a tiny bit of rufous on the shoulder luckily highlighted by the sliver of light, but the shot below shows it a little better.

I am including this next shot taken at Saguaro National Park as it gives a slightly better view of the rufous patch – not a great shot, it was a ways off.

What you can see in just about all the shots is the other key identifying feature and that is the two black/dark malar stripes that border the throat. I know what you are thinking, don’t get me started hehehe. Oh, since I’m in an agitated mood, this is another situation that tends to get my blood pressure up – I am doing research to prepare for this post and wanted to do a quick check of the Chipping Sparrow as it compares to the Rufous (surely didn’t want to lose bird cred and compare it to a bird that didn’t look like it). So I go to Cornell to look at the Rufous-Winged and then scroll down to compare it to the Chipping Sparrow. My sanity confirmed. I then clicked on the Chipping link to verify the region maps and then scrolled down to check something again on the comparison…NO RUFOUS-WINGED comparison option offered up. If it is close enough to want to compare it one way, by definition it is close enough to compare in the opposite direction. I started keeping a list of these situations as it tends to happen a LOT in my research.

Sorry for the grumblings. As with the first shot in this post from their pretty tiled wall, I am going to complete this post by bookending with another colorful image.

Big thanks to Ron for taking both those shots. That wall was gorgeous and I’ll always remember the waning light reflecting off the mountain range.

Take care everyone, we’ll see you back here in May