CHAGRIN! EMBARRASSMENT!

White-crowned Sparrow
Photo by Murray Head 1/15/09

My face is red, and not only from the cold. As Lloyd Spitalnik and Richard Koeppel pointed out in my morning mail, that bird all puffed up in the cold I posted yesterday is a White-CROWNED Sparrow, not a White-throated Sparrow. The White-crowned, a slightly bigger bird, is a much less common species in Central Park than the White-throated. It has a conspicuous white crown, no yellow lores and a pinkish bill [see above] and is not at all difficult to tell apart from the White-throated Sparrow[see below].
White-throated Sparrow