Posted by John Boyd on June 26, 2003 at 19:49:51:
In Reply to: Birding with Felipe posted by Alex on June 26, 2003 at 18:41:19:
: One bird was a Chipping Sparrow, but the other birds were not identified. One of the others was a sparrow, but the other bird which I suggested Vireo, was not a vireo at all. We need profesional help on this one. Not in the books, and I am going with a Carribean stray. It is a good segment of film and can the bird can be seen clearly. It looks like a pipit or wagtail kinda, but it was not.
Alex,
So far as I know, Chipping Sparrow has not been recorded from Miami-Dade in summer. There is a summer report from Key West. A photograph would be nice. Even a description of the bird's fieldmarks would be nice.
Without fieldmarks or a photo/video it is impossible to evaluate the sighting.
That goes triple for the odd bird. Can you post the video or a still from it?
You might want to consider the possibility that the odd bird is a youngster. These are often not illustrated in field guides and can be extremely confusing. One such bird was discussed on ID-Frontiers today. When youngsters are illustrated, the illustrations are often not that good.
I'm not sure why you think the bird is necessarily Caribbean, rather than S. American, European, or even western. We can get strays from these areas too. Two good recent examples in Florida would be the Mangrove Swallow at Viera and the Eurasian Kestrel at LARA.