Striking markings

“Your correspondent Olga Moonie asks about seeing a white-crowned sparrow in her Forfar garden,” emails Jon Cook of Broughty Ferry. “This is a north American bird which very occasionally gets blown across the Atlantic.

“This year two were found in the UK, one in Cheshire in April, the second on Lewis in May, with previous records in 2003 and 2008.

“Another possibility is that the bird Olga saw was an unusually marked British native. The reed bunting, for instance, is sometimes seen in town gardens. The young birds can have striking facial markings.”