It was time to “fall back” today as the United States reverted to standard time, giving us an extra hour of sleep or an extra hour to seize or squander. I have been looking forward to the switch, which gives me more time in the morning to bird ahead of work.
I headed to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm about 7:20 a.m., with the sun fully up and flooding the fields and trees. For the first 30 minutes, it seemed the birds were sleeping in. I saw not a one for the first half mile of my walk toward the old AT&T Building One site.
There, things perked up. With the high-pitched call of a white-throated sparrow sounding nearby, I trained my camera onto what I thought was another white-throated sparrow munching in the fronds in some tall grass. The bird was partially obscured, and I struggled to focus. When I checked my images at home, that bird turned out to be a swamp sparrow, and the best shot of the lot tops this post.
Birding buddy Bill showed up and soon spotted a fox sparrow in an evergreen tree. As I started pulling up my camera, off the bird went. Nearby, a field sparrow was in a cedar tree where a few cedar waxwings were picking at berries.
Spotting four sparrows is not unusual for me at the Pole Farm, with the most likely combination being song, savannah, white-throated and white crowned. Oddly, today I neither saw nor heard a song sparrow or savannah. I was content with those I did see.
At home I saw the usual gaggle of house sparrows fluttering at our tube feeder, and I saw the first white-throated sparrow of the season perched there, too.
While the swamp sparrow photo is sharp, most of the other images I took today were not. I’m still adjusting to my new Canon R7 camera, but I made an important discovery. Yesterday afternoon I took the Sigma telephoto lens off and switched to my old Canon kit zoom lens. Once that was on the adapter, the camera sprang to life when I tripped the “on” switch. A-ha! The problem with the camera taking multiple attempts to turn on must be a bug on the Sigma side.
Also, I headed out this morning with the camera battery at about 75 percent full. It died after about 45 minutes as Bill and I came upon three hermit thrushes in the woods. One was particularly cooperative, staying in front of us for several minutes. I had enough time to switch to a spare battery, which brought me the shot below. 🦅
The Jersey Birder 