[CT Birds] Gambel's White-crowned Sparrow

[Greg Hanisek]

Luke Tiller was on top of things when he posted a link to an interesting White-crowned Sparrow taken by Walt Duncan on one of Luke's bird walks. The bird is clearly one of the western races based on the clear gray (rather than black) lores (the area between the eye and the bill). The eastern race, Zonotrichia leucophrys leucophrys, has dark lores.

Any of the western races would be true rarities in CT. This appears to be the Gambel's race, Z.l. gambelii, based on the orangey-pink (rather than yellowish) bill. This is the race that occurs farthest northwest, including Alaska, and is the most likely one to occur in the East based on its longer migration route than races that occur farther south along the West coast, such as Z.l. nuttalli. Intergrading between races may make absolute assignment to race difficult. There are a couple of other traits, such as primary projection and amount of brown vs gray in some feather tracts, that may be hard to assess on the photo. But it does tend toward grayness, which is good for gambelii.

Hopefull Mark Szantyr, who's probably spent more time than anyone working on races of sparrows in CT, will chime in. I'm not sure if any race other than gameblii has been confirmed in the East.

Gambel's White Crowned Sparrows show up occasionally in the East and are probably somewhat overlooked because they are a subspecies rather than a "countable" species. (Editorial aside - Few things impede people from becoming really top-notch birders more than a list-driven mentality that causes them to think, "If I can't count it, I'm not interested." Thanks, Luke, for the interest).

How rare are they? Zeranski & Baptist list one CT record (although I don't know if they intended to be exhaustive). The Birds of Masschusetts, a fairly recent book, lists 12 records since 1955. That's 2+ per decade.

So this is a really nice picture of a very good bird.

Greg Hanisek
Waterbury