Mike Powell

When birds are perched in the trees during the winter, you often do not have a sense of their environment when you look at photos of them. Some sparrow species, however, like to poke about on the ground and when I manage to capture some shots of them, you get much better sense of the harshness of their environment, as was the case with this White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) last week at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

White-throated Sparrow overwinter with us, but disappear during the warmer months when they fly north to breed. One of my favorite identification features for this species is the bright yellow stripe in their lores (the area between their eyes and their bills). This particular sparrow was feverishly poking about in the snow as if foraged for food and I was particularly pleased when it hopped up onto a log and gave me a chance to capture an unobstructed shot of it.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.