home     galleries     new     equipment     links     about    contact


Song sparrow        Images © Mark A. Chappell

The song sparrow is a familiar resident across much of North America, occuring in a wide variety of races.   I photographed most of these birds in an aspen grove or pine forest in Mono County, California.   The bird at the bottom of the page was shot as it sang from atop a dry tule stem in the San Jacinto Wildlife Area, near Riverside, California, and the backlit bird on the seedhead (above left) was in the same area; another sparrow was living in thicket in Palo Alto, California.   Several were in the UC Riverside Botanical Gardens.   Photos of a bright reddish race from southeastern California are on this page.

  • Canon 10D, 1D Mk. II, 1D3, 7D, 1D4, or 7D2; 500 mm f4 or 800 mm f5.6 IS lenses plus 1.4X or 2X converter, most with fill-in flash (2003, 2004, 2006-2011, 2016, 2017)