Yesterday, while walking around Perry Phillips Lake, I encountered a small flock of white-crowned sparrows, the first I have observed in Columbia since mid spring. Favoring open country, these winter residents are best found in shrubs and thickets along wood margins, pastures, streams or lakeshores.
Back home, I observed the season's first dark-eyed juncos in our backyard. Common in a wide variety of habitats during the colder months, they will grace our neighborhood through early April when they gather in large flocks before heading north. A more interesting sighting was of three yellow-bellied sapsuckers that briefly landed in a large maple tree before moving off together; not a species that migrates in flocks, their grouping was certainly a unique and unexpected observation.
Down at Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area this morning, most of the birds were permanent residents though two migrants (pied-billed grebes and American coot) were also present. With regard to winter residents, white-crowned sparrows were abundant and I encountered a single ruby-crowned kinglet and a lone Harris' sparrow. Swamp sparrows, American tree sparrows, white-throated sparrows and fox sparrows should turn up soon; rough-legged hawks, short-eared owls and merlins may also winter on the Missouri River floodplain.
