After decades of watching birds, I’m still tripped up by sparrows. And even if I get them sorted out during migration season, I usually forget everything I’ve learned, and I have to start from scratch again the following spring.
This little cutie showed up one day in my backyard at the end of March:
He hung around for the whole day with a flock of Dark-eyed Juncos. They were cleaning up all the fallen seeds under the bird feeders.
From a distance I thought he was an American Tree Sparrow because I saw a little dark spot on his chest. But I knew that was wrong when I got out the binoculars. American Tree Sparrows don’t have streaks on their underparts, and they have a noticeable white wing bar as you can see:
I knew this wasn’t any kind of rare-for-here sparrow, but I also couldn’t put my finger on the species. I decided to “cheat” by sticking my phone out the door and recording with the Merlin app. It only took 5 seconds for the bird to vocalize, and Merlin told me it was a Song Sparrow. Oh, duh.
Embarrassingly, I photographed this Song Sparrow one day earlier while birdwatching in a marsh.
For some unexplainable reason I couldn’t easily ID the same species when it appeared 24 hours later in my own backyard!
Song Sparrows DO visit backyards and may even nest in residential areas. In my defense I most often see them in marshes and wetlands. And this is the first one I’ve ever seen in my yard.
Song Sparrows eat insects, seeds and fruits. You can easily spot them in the field because they aren’t afraid to sing their very loud song out in the open at the top of a shrub or while clinging to a tall marsh reed.
At feeders Song Sparrows will eat just about any nuts or seeds including sunflower seeds, cracked corn, millet, peanut pieces and safflower. My visitor was vacuuming up all the safflower seeds.
He only stayed for that one day and then he was gone.