Day 17.346: Sparrow excitement

The only sparrows we see with any regularity in our backyard at this time of year are dark-eyed juncos. We had twenty of them today - after a slightly disappointing showing of just six for our counting days. A couple of weeks ago we saw a white-throated sparrow and a house sparrow which caused some excitement. Today, we noticed this rather eye-catchingly colored chap in amongst the juncos. I thought perhaps a song sparrow, but at closer inspection it is a fox sparrow which we have looked for before but never spotted. Apparently we just needed to wait for it to come to us.