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I brake for Lark Buntings!
Published November 1, 2009
On Monday afternoon, I was driving through the back streets of the north side on my way to a friend’s house. As a I passed the low water crossing on Alta Vista Drive on the west side of Del Rio Lions Memorial Park, a flash of movement on the ground caught my eye.
I braked and looked out the truck’s passenger side window. There, hopping around on the ground near a cenizo bush, were several small birds. At first glance they looked like sparrows, but they had broad, pale patches on their wings, easily visible from the street.
I reached behind me for the binoculars that hang on the back of the driver’s seat and trained them on the small flock. Maybe they were goldfinches?
As the birds came into focus, my confusion grew. These birds had heavy, almost finch-like bills, but what caught my eye right off the bat was that some of the birds had black foreheads, and that black color extended down from their bills to form a “bib” on their throats. I also noticed that they had heavily-streaked breasts.
I realized that this identification was going to take me a little while, so I maneuvered the truck alongside the curb and started fumbling around in the truck’s very cluttered backseat for a bird book. And of course I didn’t have one with me.
As I cursed myself for a disorganized fool, I realized that the best course of action would be to take a photo of the mystery birds, so I could compare the photo to the illustrations in my bird books later on.
As quickly as I could, I opened my camera bag, which travels with me wherever I go, changed lenses on the camera and eased the truck just a little closer to the foraging birds. I managed to snap a couple of pictures and breathed a sigh of relief that the little birds didn’t flown away during this whole operation.
I thought these birds might be Harris’s Sparrows, the only sparrow with a black forehead and bib I could think of that isn’t normally found in this area.
I knew they weren’t Black-throated Sparrows, a species that lives in this area all year long.
I thought it would be kind of funny if they were Harris’s, a large, robust species that breeds on the northern plains of the U.S. and Canada, and which occasionally winters here. It would be funny because Harris’s Sparrows were one of the bird species I looked for so diligently during my visit to the “prairie potholes” of central North Dakota this past August.
When I got home, I pulled my Sibley’s off the shelf and opened the book to the page depicting the Harris’s Sparrows. Nope, the birds I saw were definitely not Harris’s Sparrows. The face pattern of a Harris’s Sparrow is pretty distinctive, and the birds I had seen didn’t have that face pattern. Also, the birds I had seen had a much heavier bill.
I used that bill as a guide, and on the page opposite the Harris’s Sparrows in my Sibley’s, I found my birds: Lark Buntings.
We get flocks of Lark Buntings in this area almost every winter.
Male Lark Buntings in breeding plumage are distinctive: Black all over with a broad, white wing patch.
They are a little more difficult to identify when they are in their winter plumage. My experience with them this week is a testament to that.
I was a little disappointed that they weren’t Harris’s Sparrows, but Lark Buntings are good, too, and served as a small reminder that winter is definitely on its way.
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Karen Gleason is the Del Rio News-Herald’s senior staff writer, a longtime birdwatcher and fan of the outdoors. Contact her at karen.gleason(at)delrionewsherald.com.
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