Sparrows-R-Us

 A birding friend recently sighting a Eurasian Tree Sparrow (ETS) in Woolworths at Altona.  This frustrated me as I had recently seen a sparrow in the store but had assumed it was a House Sparrow.  So today I went back loaded for Passerine, as ETS would be an addition to my Australian List.  

I wandered up and down the aisles and round and round the store for 40 minutes.  Despite my atypical attire, equipment and behaviour no fellow shoppers queried me and security staff were not deployed.  Perhaps everyone assumed I was on day release from Collingwood?  They didn't even question me in the canned vegetable aisle - which is where I think my friend got her tick - when I played a little call back.  After about 40 minutes I left, pausing only to pay for some groceries.
So I thought I would check out the car park area assuming the bird was was not an obligate shopaholic.  And there was a Sparrow!
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) my computer-graphic skills are not up to converting that from P. domesticus to P. montanus.

Things then got a little amusing as I thought I had better check that the I had gone to the correct store.  To my surprise I found another Woolies listed on their website about 1 km back up Miller Road: so I took myself off there.  Yes a shopping centre.  Yes a BWS.  But no Woolies: on enquiring in BWS (owned by Woolies) there used to be a supermarket there but it closed some months ago.  Obviously Woolies are not investing their savings from sacking all the checkout people in keeping the website up to date: Shime, Shime!


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