Purple Martin

The new starling-resistant nest box was put up in Forest Park a couple of weeks ago. This morning my first Purple Martin of the year was checking it out.

Last year, the first year I saw an effort to lure them to the park in the few years I’ve been birding there, a colony nested successfully in the box provided. Although today’s bird flew, and hadn’t returned by the time I left work, I expect to see them settling in in the next two or three weeks. My notes from last year show that I first saw them in the city on March 31 in the parking lot next to McConnell’s Pub.

Sparrows

Song and Swamp Sparrows have been numerous in Forest Park the past week. Some of the Swamps have been in stunning plumage. A number of the Songs that have turned up in the past week have been paler, with lighter brown stripes than those of the birds I’d been seeing previously. According to Rising in A Guide to the Identification and Natural History of The Sparrows of the United States and Canada, p. 194,

Twenty-nine subspecies from north of Mexico are generally recognized. Eastern birds (including Melospiza m. melodia, M. m. euphonia, and M. m. judii, which probably cannot be separated reliably, even in the hand), breeding west to the Rocky Mountains, are rich chocolate-brown, with the eastern-most perhaps somewhat more reddish in color; the east coastal M. m. atlantica is perhaps grayer.

Unfortunately neither euphonia nor judii are illustrated in Rising, and Sibley’s guide includes only six subspecies. It’s time to take the camera along everyday—since this is a species that is responsive to my pishing, I might be able to get some shots that are clear enough for the differences to show up.

I just got off the phone with a friend who said that the Harris’s Sparrow found at Horseshoe Lake last month is still there and is molting into breeding plumage.

On Saturday, March 11, I saw three Field Sparrows, my first of the year, in Lafayette Park. After a winter in which they were scarce, Fox Sparrows can be found throughout both Tower Grove and Lafayette Parks. Can Lincoln’s Sparrows be more than a few days away?

Other birds

I missed the St. Louis Audubon woodcock walk and owl prowl—the woodcocks put on a great show, I hear—but I did come across an American Woodcock in Lafayette Park on Saturday, March 11. That’s two years in a row for the species in the park.

This afternoon there was an American Wigeon swimming in Jefferson Lake (Forest Park).