Field Sparrow

Tomorrow's For the Birds

One of my favorite bird songs is produced by the lovely little Field Sparrow. Field Sparrows have soft rusty and gray plumage with an eye-ring that gives them an anemic appearance, and a pinkish-orange bill that makes me think of a pre-schooler trying on lipstick.

I find Field Sparrows adorable, but am utterly charmed by their song. Their slurring notes are incomparably sweet, staying on the same pitch while picking up speed, giving them the rhythm of a drumming Ruffed grouse. When I took college ornithology, I did a study of Savannah Sparrows that nested in a large brushy field behind the house I was living in. I could work out their home territory by playing their calls on a tape recorder and mapping the perches on which they responded. The paper I wrote about... [via Lauraerickson]