While birding brushy thickets in Yakima from fall through early spring you may see a large sparrow that doesn’t seem to have any standout field marks. If your bird has a small splotch of golden on its ...

The usual suspects at the home seed feeder don’t change much until autumn arrives and migrant species begin to arrive to escape the chill of northern climates. As I watched the usual gathering of ...

Fall is here, and the voices that tell me so are those of the crowned sparrows. There are two of these birds: the white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrow. Both arrive here in September from their ...

SANTA CRUZ — A recent UC Santa Cruz study examining the golden-crowned sparrow, which winters annually at the UCSC Arboretum & Botanic Garden, shows that the colorful birds have complex social ...

Some transplanted Easterners dismiss California’s idea of seasons: do we really call 50 degree temperatures and a bit of rain winter weather? But of course we have seasons, and to observe the ...

In late April and early May, I enjoyed seeing a variety of sparrows, most of which were arriving from their winter quarters and fueling up for the next jump in their northward migration. Several kinds ...

Birds with bold crown coloring are dominant over those with duller crown colors. Though highly territorial on their summer breeding grounds, golden-crowned sparrows form winter flocks with the same ...

• Mountain bluebirds usually arrive by late February; great-horned owls and golden eagles nest. • Mourning cloak and Milbert’s tortoiseshell butterflies may emerge from crevices behind bark on warm ...

The trail to Nugget Falls was a lively place in early May. Hermit thrushes had arrived and were flitting about in the understory, not yet ready to sing. In more open, shrubby areas, a mixed flock of ...