A Special Visitor

by Wayne Miller, age 13

On January 25th, 2007, it was cold with a west wind. A few days before that we had put out a ground feeder for the White-crowned Sparrows and other birds.

Glancing out the window one day I saw a strange bird. “Harris’s Sparrow”, I said. I was just kidding of course, although I knew it was something different. My brothers came over to see what I had just seen, and sure enough, it WAS a Harris’s Sparrow! We didn’t see it for the rest of the evening.

The next day one of my brothers didn’t have to work, which really worked out just fine. That way he could watch to see if the the sparrow would return. Sure enough, it returned quite often that day. My oldest brother told a local birder about the bird. That evening he came to visit with four other birders, and they all got really good looks at it.

The following morning, which was Saturday, four more birders came. They waited all day, and finally saw the bird that afternoon. 43 birders came that day, and only five of them didn’t see the bird. On Sunday, 25 more birders visited and got to see it, and that’s how it went for a week or two. After two weeks, not as many birders came. Then it snowed a lot and because of that, not many birders came. It didn’t stop the sparrow though. It kept coming to the feeders regularly on these bitter cold days. Then it warmed up a little bit and people started to come again.

People came from all over Ohio and other states too. They came from Michigan, Maryland, West Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina. Some of them didn’t come to Ohio just to see the sparrow, but were in Ohio already and heard about the bird and decided to come and see it. Some of the Ohio Young Birders Club members also showed up. We met A LOT of birders.

We had more than 450 people come to see “our” bird. It was a “life bird” for a lot of those people, as well as for me. When it first came it was in nonbreeding plumage, but it changed to breeding plumage.

This was an unforgettable experience.