Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 18:35:54 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Stan Arnold Subject: Sparrow question MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Folks, Last evening at UMBC, I was tracking down some "little" noises from a grassy field at the edge of the woods, and saw one then another non-descript little sparrow fly from the grass to the nearby trees. When I got a look at one, it was almost tail-less, streaked (head and breast), and had a yellow bill. I had no idea what it was, until an adult Field Sparrow came over and fed one. Sibley's diagram of juvenile Field Sparrow seems to closely depict what I saw, except he shows a pink/neutral bill. As I recall, the bill color of these juveniles wasn't just yellow, it was YELLOW. Does anyone have experience with hatchling Field Sparrows? Has anyone seen a yellow bill color in them? If it weren't so outlandish, I'd suggest that the adult Field Sparrows were feeding juvenile Am. Tree Sparrows. Stan Arnold Glen Burnie blackrail@earthlink.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================