It’s that time of year again: sparrow season! The subtleties of plumage and behavior in the
various sparrow species make them a lot of fun to study, as most birders will
affirm. Because North America is rich in
sparrows, I’m going to limit my focus mainly to the common sparrows of the Southeast. Since I’ve also spent a lot of time in northwestern
Arkansas, I’ll throw in a few species from that region, as well. Who knows?
Some of them might show up in your backyard.
Probably the most abundant sparrow in woods and thickets in
southeastern North America right now is the White-throated Sparrow. Even when you can’t see these birds, you can usually
find them by listening for their sputtering pink!
calls. They also sing quite frequently
on the wintering grounds, and the song is a plaintive, whistled melody that is
very easy to learn (a couple of helpful mnemonics are “Old Sam Peabody,
Peabody, Peabody” and “Oh, sweet Canada, Canada, Canada”). Some White-throated Sparrows have white
“eyebrow” and crown stripes as well as white throats, while others are drabber,
with buff-colored stripes.
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| White-throated Sparrow |
The White-throated Sparrow has a slightly larger cousin, the
White-crowned Sparrow, which also has bold stripes on the head. While White-crowned Sparrows are apparently
very common in the winter months in many regions of the continent, they seem to
be scarce where I live; I have seen them at only a handful of locations in
Mississippi. When I lived in Arkansas,
however, I observed them regularly, usually from October to early May. They even showed up at my feeders. In my experience, you might have good luck searching
for White-crowneds in habitats that are slightly more open and brushy than the
usual places where you find White-throated Sparrows.
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| White-crowned Sparrow |
If the habitat is really
open, as in fields and pastureland, you will likely find Savannah
Sparrows. These are small, short-tailed,
brown-streaked sparrows with yellow lores (that is, the areas just in front of
the eyes). These birds have high-pitched,
insect-like calls and usually forage in loose flocks.
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| Savannah Sparrow (perched in willows, yes, but in a marshy field) |
The Chipping Sparrow and the Field Sparrow are other common
sparrows of more open types of habitats.
The Chipping Sparrow is numerous throughout the year in the
Southeast, while the Field Sparrow is a bit harder to find. However, like the Chipping Sparrow, it
commonly breeds in southeastern North America.
The bouncing, trilling song of the Field Sparrow is one of my favorite
sounds to hear in old fields and brushy cedar groves in the summer. The Chipping Sparrow’s dry, almost
mechanical-sounding song, on the other hand, may not be as aurally pleasing,
but hearing it always reminds me of the open pine woodlands where the species
usually nests.
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| Chipping Sparrow being banded |
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| Field Sparrow |
As far as plumage goes, both Chipping and Field Sparrows have
plain underparts, prominent wing bars, and long tails. Field Sparrows’ outer tail feathers are white—a
useful field mark to remember when the birds are flitting away from you. The Field Sparrow’s white eye ring and pink
bill are distinctive year-round, while the Chipping Sparrow becomes somewhat
drabber after molting into winter plumage—although it does retain its eye-line
and crown.
Song Sparrows commonly occur throughout most of the United
States during the colder months. In many
regions, they are year-round residents.
In Mississippi, however, they are gone by mid-spring, even though the
males will occasionally sing their territorial songs in the winter. I finally heard actual breeding Song
Sparrows—not just the out-of-season songs—in northern Alabama and Georgia this
year, which was a treat. Away from Song
Sparrow breeding territories, you’re far more likely to hear the nasal, raspy
call that the birds use for contacts and alarms. The Song Sparrow is pretty distinctive in
appearance, being fairly large and long-tailed.
It has brown streaks on its breast and sides, and a very prominent
central breast spot.
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| Song Sparrow |
All that said, the Song Sparrow may be confused with the Lincoln’s
Sparrow in places where both species are common. In my part of the southeastern U.S.,
Lincoln’s Sparrows are quite rare during the winter. However, when I lived in northwestern Arkansas, I saw many
of them. They’re smaller than Song
Sparrows, with shorter tails and more grayish coloration on their heads. If Song Sparrows look as though their jagged
breast markings were drawn with crayons, then Lincoln’s Sparrows look like
they’ve been finely penciled.
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| Lincoln's Sparrow |
Lincoln’s Sparrows are closely related to the more abundant
Swamp Sparrows, which—true to their name—love skulking in marshes, wetlands,
and moist thickets. Unlike Song and
Lincoln’s Sparrows, Swamp Sparrows lack bold underpart markings; the patterns
on their breasts and bellies are more like smudgy watercolor. Their reddish wings and gray-and-brown heads make
them easy to recognize, and their chip
calls are louder and more emphatic than those of most other sparrows.
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| Swamp Sparrow -- note gray head and reddish wings |
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| Swamp Sparrow underpart view |
The Fox Sparrow is another of
the relatively common wintering sparrows.
As its name suggests, it—or, at least, its eastern form—is patterned
with bright rufous streaks and stripes.
In western North America, there are other color forms in addition to the
“red” one. To be honest, I don’t see these
large and flashy sparrows particularly often where I live. My tip for finding them is to check in
thickets of berry-producing shrubs and vines in wooded areas. When I find Fox Sparrows, they are usually single
or in very small groups. Keep alert for their
loud smack! calls.
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| Fox Sparrow -- note yellow bill, gray on head, and extensive rufous coloration. |
Now let’s look at a sparrow that isn’t brown, but slate-gray
and white. The Dark-eyed Junco is a
common wintering species in thickets and open woods all over the U.S. If you have bird feeders, you may see it
feeding in small flocks on the ground.
When startled, the birds give trilling flight calls and flash their white
outer tail feathers.
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| Dark-eyed Junco |
For good measure, here are some other sparrow species that I
saw when I lived in Arkansas. Unlike the
previous birds, all of these are very rare in Mississippi. My time spent observing them out-of-state
will hopefully come in handy, though, if they ever show up around my current
birding spots!
One of my favorites, mainly for its flashiness, is the Harris’s Sparrow. This is an enormous sparrow, even bigger than Fox Sparrows, and its bold black crown and “beard,” along with the salmon-pink bill, draw the eye. I spotted this particular Harris’s from my apartment window while I was working at my desk one day in late April. You can tell that it is in breeding plumage rather than winter plumage, since its head is pale gray instead of buff-colored. This was an interesting day for migratory birds, actually; a Rose-breasted Grosbeak landed in the thicket shortly after I snapped pictures of the sparrow. Harris’s Sparrows are mainly western birds and occur very rarely in Mississippi.
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| Harris's Sparrow |
The bird in the photo below appeared, along with a companion
that I didn’t manage to photograph, in the woods near my apartment on a warm
day in May. Although the identification
of these birds was quite evident to me—despite the fact that I hadn’t seen this
species before— I thought that, in looks
and behavior, these Clay-colored Sparrows were uncannily similar to Chipping
Sparrows—but also just different
enough that they stood out from the other birdlife in the area. While Clay-colored Sparrows pass through
Arkansas (and much of central North America) during migration, relatively few
of them travel through Mississippi.
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| Clay-colored Sparrow |
An even more unusual species for Mississippi is the American
Tree Sparrow. American Tree Sparrows
showed up in my “yard” in moderate numbers during a snowy winter in Arkansas. Like Chipping Sparrows, they have very plain
and pale breasts—at least, for the most part: one of the key field marks of the
American Tree Sparrow is a single dark spot in the center of the breast. This species is commonly found farther north
than the area where I currently live, but there have been sightings in more
southerly regions. At any rate, I’m glad
that I have had the chance to see it.
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| American Tree Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos |
