I had a nice trio of local sparrows today on the front range Cold Spring Trail: Rufous-Crowned in abundance, several Black-Chinned above 925m, and 2 Bell's at 680m elevation SSW of Montecito Peak.
The Bell's Sparrows are the first front range ebird record since 2018 and within the SBCO CBC circle. Lehman (The Birds of Santa Barbara County, California; 2024) notes "A smaller number of birds of the nominate subspecies A. b. belli...have been found along East Camino Cielo in the Santa Ynez Mountains, at least formerly, eastward to at least Montecito Peak. Santa Barbara CBCs recorded as many as 5 individuals (30 December 1989) there, but most counts found only 1–3 birds and many have missed the species entirely (including almost all counts since 2000). Nesting season highs were of up to 5 birds (2 June 1980); the only post-2000 summer sighting there, however, is of 1 on 15 June 2011." -- Bradley Hacker Goleta CA 93117 USA flickr bird photos <https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradley_hacker/> eBird photos <https://media.ebird.org/catalog?sort=rating_rank_desc&userId=USER413715&mediaType=photo> eBird data <https://ebird.org/profile/NDEzNzE1/world> iNaturalist <https://www.inaturalist.org/people/brhacker> <https://hacker.faculty.geol.ucsb.edu/>
