{"id":438,"date":"2017-10-31T23:28:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T23:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/?p=438"},"modified":"2017-11-01T12:16:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T12:16:17","slug":"not-a-sparrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/not-a-sparrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a sparrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know how many times I have seen a dunnock and thought it was a sparrow. They do look quite like sparrows – hence their common name, the hedge sparrow. But they are not sparrows. and not even close relatives. They are accentors, probably closer to thrushes and warblers than sparrows.<\/p>\n

It was only after photographing one a couple of years ago that I realised that it was not a sparrow. The colour was wrong. How many hedge sparrows had I seen before without realising that they were dunnocks?<\/p>\n

I have of course, since learned to spot them. No problem identifying this one one who dropped by when I was looking for red squirrels at Morton Lochs on Saturday …<\/p>\n

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According to the BBC wildlife magazine, the\u00a0dunnock has a fascinating sex life – polygyny, polyandry, polygynandry … you name it, anything goes. And they are a favourite target for cuckoos too. You can read the lurid details on the BBC wildlife mag website …\u00a0http:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/blog-custom\/bto-garden-bird-month-march-dunnock<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know how many times I have seen a dunnock and thought it was a sparrow. They do look quite like sparrows – hence… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,95],"tags":[96,98,97],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird","category-dunnock","tag-hedge-sparrow","tag-morton-lochs","tag-sex"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/P1500177a-Morton-Lochs-1-e1509538396622.jpg?fit=2337%2C915&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8CEbN-74","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":444,"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davesmith.org.uk\/imagenic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}