{"id":122966,"date":"2022-11-03T06:04:32","date_gmt":"2022-11-03T12:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=122966"},"modified":"2022-11-03T07:39:09","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T13:39:09","slug":"bathing-vesper-sparrow-my-small-contribution-to-a-body-of-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/03\/bathing-vesper-sparrow-my-small-contribution-to-a-body-of-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Bathing Vesper Sparrow – My Small Contribution To A Body Of Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inclement weather (we have snow on the ground, even in the valleys!) and surgery recovery continue to prevent me from photographing birds so today I decided to rerun a favorite older post. This one is actually a combination of two posts that I published eight years ago, in September and November of 2014. For this version I’ve combined the two posts, edited the text and tweaked the formatting.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vesper Sparrows are “dust bathers”. They do it so often that they’re well known for having puffs of dust fly off of them when they take off. Cornell’s Birds of North America Online, known today as Birds of the World, says Vesper Sparrows aren’t known to bathe in water.<\/p>\n

Apparently this one didn’t read the book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"vesper<\/p>\n

1\/3200 f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When I’m in the Centennial Valley of Montana I sometimes drive the much more isolated North Road as I’m looking for birds. It’s a very long and dusty dirt road but driving it sometimes pays off with raptors of many species. On this occasion my reward was a bathing Vesper Sparrow instead, which we found fluttering around a little spring flowing next to the road.<\/p>\n

This bird’s bath began cautiously…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"vesper<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500 f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

but as with most small birds it soon became quite frenetic about it. I was delighted to get a side view, good light and eye contact for much of the performance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"vesper<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500 f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The sparrow seemed to deliberately fluff its feathers before crouching down into the water to shake,…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"vesper<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500 f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called <\/em><\/p>\n

which makes sense because the feather surfaces would make better contact with the water when fluffed. The bird’s feather and body contortions were impressive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"vesper<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200 f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called <\/em><\/p>\n

When the bath was complete the sparrow landed on a nearby wire to shake and dry off in the sun. I thought it was interesting behavior, despite the lack of a catch light in the eye and the shiny and unappealing barbed wire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I had no idea I\u2019d photographed anything unusual until three weeks later when I was preparing a blog post about the bathing episode. As I often do while preparing a post I did a little research on both the species and the behavior and noticed that Birds of North America Online (BNA), a source I highly respect for its detailed accounts of bird natural history and behavior, said that Vesper Sparrows often take dust baths but are \u201cnot observed to bathe in water<\/em>\u201d. This made me wonder if I might possibly have documented something new so I made a mental note to send BNA a link to my post in case they might be interested in updating their Vesper Sparrow account regarding bathing.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’d been corresponding with Myrah Bridwell, Permissions Coordinator for Cornell\u2019s Handbook of Bird Biology<\/a><\/span>,<\/u><\/span>\u00a0on another matter and in the \u201cconversation\u201d I mentioned to her what I\u2019d photographed and sent her a link to the post. Unbeknownst to me, Myrah forwarded a link to my post to Alan Poole, Editor of BNA Online, telling him that I\u2019d \u201cdocumented a previously undocumented behavior\u201d.<\/p>\n

To make a long story slightly shorter, I happened to check BNA\u2019s Vesper Sparrow account yesterday morning (October 1, 2014) and it had been edited.\u00a0 What used to say \u201cnot observed to bathe in water\u201d now says \u201calso known to bathe in water (pers. comm. Ron Dudley; images and written account)\u201d and it includes a link to my original Bathing Vesper Sparrow post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I really deserve no particular credit, other than for being in the right place at the right time and paying attention. As a science teacher for 33 years before I retired, I spent my entire career teaching my students about scientific knowledge gleaned by others and this is one of the few times I\u2019ve ever contributed anything original to that body of knowledge. As small as my contribution might be, it still gives me a lot of personal satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason for this post is to encourage others to take note of the little things you observe in the field and if you see something interesting that might be new, document and report it. Somewhere. And Birds of the World<\/a><\/span><\/span> (BotW) would be an excellent starting point.<\/p>\n

BotW is a pay site that requires a membership fee ($49\/year or $7.99\/month) to access their complete bird accounts but in my opinion that fee is a bargain if you\u2019re heavily into birds.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: If you’re interested, and if you’re already a dues-paying member of BotW, my contribution to their Vesper Sparrow account can be seen here<\/a><\/span><\/span> under “Self-Maintenance”.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Which provided a lot of personal satisfaction. (5 photos)<\/p>\n

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