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<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThings began to change incrementally, when I noticed the bright yellow spot between the eyes and the bill of a White-throated sparrow. So many bird names have little relationship with what a bird\u2019s actually physique (I\u2019m looking at you, red-bellied woodpecker!), so the fact that the White-throated sparrow really did have a gleaming white throat also helped matters. In early-mid April in Toronto, White-throated sparrows are abundant and being able to identify them with some measure of certainty gave me a confidence boost. Add to that a loud, easily recognizable song (Oh sweet Canada, Canada<\/em>) and there was finally one<\/em> LBJ that I could see myself bonding with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly thereafter, I developed a slight crush on a Field Sparrow, with its rusty cap, delicately etched eye-ring and unexpectedly cute, diminutive pink bill. The following season, a Chipping Sparrow claimed my heart and I started to notice that its rufous cap was more pronounced than the Field Sparrows, and its bill a little pointier; it was an all-round classier spectacle. And then I got to know the Fox Sparrow\u2014arguably the most regal, most extravagant of them all\u2014and I had to admit that this was the beginning of a lifelong affair with LBJs. After that, even the American Tree Sparrow, with its fetching bi-colored bill transformed into a welcome winter friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I seem to add a new sparrow to my repertoire every season. Getting to know them has been an exercise in learning to appreciate nuance. Yes, they\u2019re all brownish, smallish, and streaky, but in completely different, wildly varied ways.<\/p>\n<\/div> I\u2019ve been admiring early spring sparrows through my SFL 8×30 binoculars<\/a> and have noticed that the colors are even brighter than I\u2019d previously thought. This weekend, I was hoping to see my first chipping sparrow of the season and miraculously ended up at the Woodbine Beach dunes in Toronto just in time to see a Lark Sparrow\u2014a rare visitor from western north America. I had seen the bird once before, from a distance, and long before I had taken the time to study the nuance of little brown birds (and before I had quality optics), and it looked\u2026.alas, suspiciously like a House Sparrow. I put the sighting on my life list, but without really understanding what all the hype was about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this time, oh my goodness, this wasn\u2019t just a brown bird. This particular Lark Sparrow was a thing of beauty, with an arresting facial pattern of bold chestnut and black lines, offset by white \u2014as if an avant-garde painter had a hand in the bird\u2019s design. The day was slightly overcast and the SFL 8×30<\/a> let in so much light that the bird\u2019s coloring became even more pronounced. For over an hour, I couldn\u2019t take my eyes off this unexpected visitor. And soon enough there were about 40 birders standing on the boardwalk, marveling at this early spring gift we had all just been given. Once I tore myself away from the Lark Sparrow, I made my way around the park and managed to find four more sparrow species: Song, Chipping, Field, and White-throat. And because these SFLs are so lightweight, I could barely feel them around my neck as I traipsed through the brush, on the lookout for yet another sparrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most extraordinary thing seeing the Lark Sparrow\u2014apart from its sheer beauty\u2014is the fact that I\u2019m now at the stage in my birding journey (OK, I\u2019ll just go ahead and call it an obsession!) that I can appreciate the nuance of this little brown bird and see for what it really is\u2014something truly miraculous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Julia didn\u2019t start off liking sparrows: “Brownish, greyish, smallish, and streaked \u2013 they all looked the same to me.” What made her stop ignoring them and start admiring them? And what role did our SFL 8\u00d730 binoculars play in this? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":3364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[932,935],"tags":[],"topics":[],"yst_prominent_words":[32,54,102,633],"class_list":["post-3361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experience1","category-community1"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Julia Zarankin","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/author\/juliazarankin\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/julia-zarankin-picture-2_small-600x450.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Experience<\/a>","Community<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Experience<\/span>","Community<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 3 years ago","modified":"Updated 1 year ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on May 30, 2023","modified":"Updated on January 15, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on May 30, 2023 9:54 am","modified":"Updated on January 15, 2025 9:26 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3361"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4428,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361\/revisions\/4428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3361"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=3361"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/julia-zarankin-picture-3-768x1024.jpg\")
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