There is no day without some good bird sightings here on the bluffs above the Little Maquoketa River Valley at the moment. Yesterday we saw briefly an Eastern Towhee for the first time in our neighborhood. Today it was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet that drew my attention but it moved too fast for the camera. Easy to identify is this beautiful White-throated Sparrow that is probably on its way to the breeding grounds up north in Minnesota and Canada. I checked my records, means the metadata of the photos I made in the years before, and this year the White-throated Sparrow is exactly ten days earlier here than in 2008 and 2013. Probably because of my travel activities I have not seen this medium-sized sparrow during other years. This bird doesn’t seem to be so skittish as many others and it came close enough to fill the frame without that I had to wait very long.