{"id":19467,"date":"2013-10-24T05:07:42","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T11:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19467"},"modified":"2013-10-24T05:07:42","modified_gmt":"2013-10-24T11:07:42","slug":"white-crowned-sparrows-sunflower-gluttony-and-crossed-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/24\/white-crowned-sparrows-sunflower-gluttony-and-crossed-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"White-crowned Sparrows – Sunflower Gluttony And Crossed Bills"},"content":{"rendered":"

A local pumpkin farmer (Pack Farms) plants sunflowers\u00a0along the periphery of his pumpkin field and\u00a0each fall they provide a messy bounty for a variety of birds.\u00a0 Most species seem to be tidy eaters but the juvenile White-crowned Sparrows are an exception.<\/p>\n

The orange in the background of these shots is – you guessed it – pumpkins.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There must be something sticky holding the sunflower seeds in place because the sparrows sure seem to make a mess of their beak while dining.\u00a0 For some reason I don’t see the same thing happen with blackbirds – perhaps sparrows are just untidy eaters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Another possibility (tongue in cheek) is that the juveniles (brown crown-stripes)\u00a0just haven’t yet had time to develop proper table manners.\u00a0 Virtually all of the juveniles feeding on the sunflowers had food-encrusted beaks while …<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

the adults (black crown-stripe) were much more tidy.<\/p>\n

Notice that this bird has crossed mandible tips, similar to the crossed bills of\u00a0Red and White-winged Crossbills who use their unique bills to pry conifer seeds out of their cones.<\/p>\n

It’s just a coincidence that this sparrow with a crossed bill was using a food source that,\u00a0like conifer seeds,\u00a0must to some degree\u00a0be pried out of its “container” but it was a coincidence that I did notice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-winged<\/a><\/p>\n

Crossed bills show up occasionally in a variety of species for which it’s not “normal”.\u00a0 This Red-winged Blackbird is a prime example.<\/p>\n

Which makes me wonder if such a variation was the evolutionary\u00a0“fuel” for the\u00a0species trait in Crossbills.<\/p>\n

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

A local pumpkin farmer (Pack Farms) plants sunflowers along the periphery of his pumpkin field and each fall they provide a messy bounty for a variety of birds. Most species seem to be tidy eaters but the juvenile White-crowned Sparrows are an exception.<\/p>\n

The orange in the background of these shots is – you guessed it – pumpkins.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,390,350],"tags":[24,1706,101,1708,190,1707,264,298,325,1705],"class_list":["post-19467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-red-winged-blackbirds","category-white-crowned-sparrows","tag-adult","tag-crossbill","tag-crossed-bill","tag-crossed-mandibles","tag-juvenile","tag-pumpkin","tag-red-winged-blackbird","tag-sunflower","tag-white-crowned-sparrow","tag-zono-albicollis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/white-crowned-sparrow-1287-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-53Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}