 A few weeks ago, over at Deal Test Site, I took this picture of a Chipping Sparrow. Yesterday (July 17, 2002), I encountered some more in a different part of the park.
I wasn't actually looking for Chipping Sparrows. I had gone to the park in the hope of finding the warbler that I saw but didn't photograph last week.
Walking around some trees partly to keep out of the direct sunshine, I caught sight of a catbird disappearing into a shady tree. From inside the tree, I could hear what I took to be more catbirds, but I was mistaken.
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 Rather than catbirds, there was a colony of small birds. At first, they hid from me on the far side of the tree and I could see only black silhouettes. But suddenly, one of them appeared on a visible branch. I was able to get the bird just about in focus and clearly, these birds were Chipping Sparrows.
I took a couple more shots of the first bird -- note how it puffed itself up some before flying off (below right). Then I tried to take pictures of some of the others. They were unhappy about my presence, noisily and begrudgingly moving on to another tree.
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 The camera didn't cooperate too well with this slightly blurry shot. But you get a very good look at the shape of its tail here. The two-tone look is not at all visible in any of the other pictures (including the one at top where the bird must have been holding its tail differently).
Finally, one of the birds emerged from under the shade of the trees into the sunlight. I was able to get a number of quite good shots, even though the leaves were obscuring parts of the bird.
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 I had a sense that the bird was playing peek-a-boo with me. The wind was whipping the tree around some and the bird kept popping behind the leaves and then peeping out at me, each time from a different angle.
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