Can you identify all the wintering birds in this photo? There are five individuals of three species here. They do enjoy hanging out with one another and this year it seems plenty of people have been lucky enough to spot them together in various parts of the northeast. They all enjoy open areas like grasslands, farms, beaches, roadsides and fields. The answers will be listed after this photo so don’t cheat!
Do you have them all? If not look away now!
The birds are, from left to right, a Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis), another Snow Bunting with a Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris) behind it, a third Snow Bunting and a Lapland Longspur (Calcarius lapponicus) closest to us. It seems like more of them, Lapland Longspurs especially, have been seen as of late in sizable flocks perhaps because of the frigid polar vortex air forcing more of them to the south.
