Observers: Justin Hite
Email: justinhite@gmail.com
Verification: sierra
Remote Name: 128.253.56.169
Date: 10/18/2006
Time: 01:22 PM -0400
I birded the Greengate Cottonwoods area from about 7-8am on October 16th...sorry for the lateness of the post. The White-throated Sparrow was either a tan-striped adult or an immature, but either way it was a different bird than the Parker’s found nearby the day before. It was right at the gates with a handful of White-crowneds and Chipping Sparrows. The Nuttall’s Woodpecker was fiddling with the bark in the cottonwoods, sometimes descending to about 15’, but mostly staying up closer to the canopy. I don’t bird in Bishop much, so I’m not sure if this is a normal bird for the area or not – we definitely don’t have them in the Mono Basin. Its face was very black, with a thin white stripe inside it, unlike the big white cheek of a LBWO and very much like a NUWO. The undersides were clean white, instead of the yellowish-washed tints on LBWOs. And the upper back was cleanly black, with perhaps the tiniest beginnings of white stripes on the furthest edges of the back, while below that the back was fully laddered. The crown was red in back and black in front, so it was a male. There was also an adult Red-shouldered Hawk on the other side of Dixon Lane. And later in the day two ravens were beating up a Barn Owl in the basalt gorge at Fossil Falls.