Sparrow: Harbinger of Death

Dear Cora,

You've always been a smart one, so riddle me this: why would dozens of otherwise (apparently) sane people drive 90 minutes or longer, then hike over 4 miles, half of it through soft beach sand, then stand for hours in cold wind just to see a peek of sparrow? If you guessed, "for the exercise," then you would be wrong.

The sparrow in question is a Le Conte's Sparrow. This one, in fact:

Yes, I know there are branches blocking the view. Do you think I don't know that, and it doesn't irritate the heck out of me?

And this is what they look like when they try to escape rapidly from 16 prying eyes:

Disappeared faster than a mobile home in a tornado.

So, why all the fuss? Because it turns out that there have only been a few dozen of these guys ever recorded in California. And, even in their typical ranges, they are extremely difficult to see or study since they spend most of their time hiding in thick grass. Cornell understatedly describes it as having "low detectibility" (I describe it as "f'ing annoying", but then again, I'm not a scientist).

To get an idea of how camouflage works, try to find the bird in this picture:

If you can't see it, zoom in to the very middle:

Not exactly the Kim Kardashian of birds, is it?

This guy was found during a Christmas Bird Count, so it turns out that wandering around in the bushes on a cold, windy, rainy day is good...for Science!

After this, jubilant but exhausted, we drove into San Francisco to find the Rustic Bunting that had been reported for a few weeks. Now, a Rustic Bunting is extremely rare in the US, rare enough that it isn't even listed in Cornell's list of "Birds of North America". So, we had planned to make 3 different visits to the location he'd been seen in Golden Gate Park.

Fortunately, finding him was like shooting fish in a barrel... after walking to the place he had been reported, we found him in 5 minutes. In fact, the semi-mythical "Parking Space" was much harder to find than the bird. Based on this and the Falcated Duck experience, I think we have discovered an important negative correlation: the less likely the bird is to be in our area, the easier it is to see!

In case you happen to get down to Golden Gate Park soon, here's what you should look for:

"What you lookin' at, Willis?"

Now, get back to whatever you were doing,
Me

p.s. The title refers to a putative European myth. Really.