One Stop Shopping

 White-crowned Sparrow juvenile

The Cascade Ramblings website is sort of a one stop shopping center for the nature lover.  It started out as a data base for high mountain lakes, where one could find all kinds of information about lakes; like location, route, fishing and camping possibilities, and much more.  Through time other sections were developed for wildflowers, mushrooms, and critters.  A trip journal developed, and then a blog attached. So now, nature lovers of almost any stripe can come looking for information, whether they be fishermen, hikers, back-packers, lovers of flowers and mushrooms, or, and this is the one important to me now, bird watching. It has become a vault of information that I continue to add to even as my circle of travel becomes more constricted to local trails and parks close at hand. These days I ramble on mostly about birds, and I am amazed at how much more there is to learn, and how exited I am in the discoveries.  This photo is a good example.  Many years ago I remember discovering the sweet insistent song of the White-crowned Sparrow with it's sharply contrasting black and white crown. It was some years later when I learned to recognize the more subtle brown and white coloring of an immature. And just days ago I was surprised to learn that even though the mature, and immature White-crowns have breasts with-out stripes, a recent fledged juvenile does have stripes. So, as I continue to use Cascade Ramblings as a depository for all kinds of information on nature, I hope others too will find it a helpful source when shopping for information on birds and much more. Check out the White-crowned Sparrow page in the Critters section here.