Spying on Sparrows
Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”
The snow finally disappeared after three straight days of brilliant sunshine. Rising temperatures and strong winds dried out most of the yard and the meadows. The ice is gone from the pond, and the bird feeders must now be taken in at night. Robins and redwings are here, neighbors have heard woodcock, and new birds arrive every day.
The first tree sparrow showed up this year on April 3rd, and several song sparrows stopped by a day later. Unlike chickadees and titmice, these sparrows ignored the feeders and foraged beside a couple of juncos, searching for the seeds on the ground. Of course, since this is the North Country, I need to remind you that spring may not fully arrive until late April or even the first week of May. Tree sparrows and song sparrows won’t mind the snow, so long as they can still find some seeds.
1 Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.
April 16, 2018. Song Sparrows have stripes converging to a spot on their breast, their beaks are dark, and they have white stripes above their eyes.
April 16, 2018. Tree Sparrows have breast spots on a clear breast, cinnamon-colored caps, and bi-colored beaks.
The song sparrows particularly like the area right below the feeder, because that is where the most seeds piled up over the winter. Of course, the husks of the sunflower seeds far outnumber the remaining unopened seeds, and that is probably why the chickadees and titmice prefer to go to the feeder, where there is always a fresh supply of seeds. I don’t know why the sparrows don’t follow suit. Perhaps they prefer something other than sunflower seeds, perhaps they avoid crowded lunchrooms, or perhaps they can’t stand the smell of red squirrels that surely lingers about the feeder.
In any case, the song sparrows stay on the ground. Although I have watched the birds at and below the feeder for nearly 25 years, I just this week noticed an unusual behavior. Most birds peck among the grass with their beaks, searching for an unopened sunflower seed or for one of the smaller, round seeds that the winter regulars discard. The song sparrows have a more effective method. They rapidly scratch with their feet for half a second, spraying the detritus about, and allowing them to pick out the best seeds. That is just another example of why bird-watching is much more than compiling a life list of the birds you have seen.
Sparrows Month by Month
Tree sparrows are the only sparrows that I have seen here in the middle of winter. However, this is the northernmost part of their winter range, and they may not be regular visitors until late March.
December 16, 2017. I took a photo of a tree sparrow at the feeder. [This is the only photo I have taken of a tree sparrow between mid-April and mid-December.]
January 6, 2016. A pair of tree sparrows and a pair of juncos were enjoying the sunflower seeds spread out under the feeder. [I took more photos of tree sparrows on 1/7, 2/9, and 2/11/16.]
March 28, 2016. Tree sparrows are the only sparrows that visit our feeder in winter, and they will be in Canada by the end of April.
Song sparrows are the next to arrive. I have seen them for the first time as early as March 11th and as late as mid-April. When they first arrive, they sometimes seem rather sluggish:
April 3, 2022, 50 degrees at 4 pm. The first song sparrow of the year stood motionless by the feeder for more than five minutes, allowing me to take several photos. Finally, it managed to take one step to the right and snatch a seed. Then it walked and pecked its way toward the pole that holds up the feeder, where it chased another sparrow away.
At about the same time that tree sparrows depart for Canada, chipping sparrows and white-throated sparrows show up looking for seeds and insects. Some of them will be summer residents, and they will soon join the song sparrows in looking for places to build their nests.
April 21, 2003. Today was our first sighting of many birds: a flicker, tree swallows (who immediately checked out the house by the pond), a white-throated sparrow, a chipping sparrow, and an eastern kingbird.
May 4, 2019. Out past the birches behind the screen house, a white-throated sparrow foraged in the weeds. I heard its easily identifiable call but only managed one picture in which the bird was mostly obscured by grass and protected by its standard-issue sparrow camouflage.
I’m always excited to see the spectacular colors of a mature white-throated sparrow. Yellow spots just behind its bill provide a striking contrast to its crisp white, black and grey stripes.
White Throated Sparrow,
April 28, 2016
Although I only see them briefly as they migrate in the spring and the fall, I frequently hear them all summer calling loudly and clearly what Roger Tory Petersen characterized as “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.”
June 28, 2005, 85 degrees, hot hazy, and humid. Walking through the Lower 40, I heard hermit thrush, white-throated sparrows, and winter wrens singing their spectacular and easily recognized songs, but I only saw phoebes and crows.
July 12, 2000, (partly cloudy, 70 degrees). I followed the power lines down to a spot where a large rock provided a seat and a chance to enjoy the view over a field filled with daisies and buttercups toward the green slopes of Garnet Hill. On the way back, I heard a white-throated sparrow singing his “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody” song from the top of a 15-foot snag – very loud and triumphant, like something out of Aida.
Although chipping sparrows do nest in Sugar Hill, we’re most likely to see them when they arrive in the spring or when they’re getting ready to migrate in the summer. Like tree sparrows, they have a rufous crown and a chest spot, but the chipping sparrows are smaller and lack the breast stripes. I most commonly see them searching for insects on the patio or along the edge of our driveway.
June 27, 2022, 80 degrees, partly cloudy after morning rain. A chipping sparrow foraged on the patio, either unaware or not bothered by the kestrel sitting in one of its usual perches on a dead branch at the top of the large maple at the corner of Post and Pearl Lake Roads.
August 15, 2015. Chipping Sparrows often patrol the edge of our gravel driveway, which appears to offer a tasty variety of fast foods.
The resident sparrows make their nests in May, and by the end of June, they can be seen flying around with food for their brood.
June 24, 2018, 65 degrees, cloudy, still, noon. …At 1:35 pm, while sitting on the steps of the screen house, I managed to get a photo of a song sparrow with a winged insect in its beak. It sat in one spot for several minutes, allowing me time to find it in the camera, no small feat since the bird was 80 feet away amidst leaves.
June 16, 2016. I took a photo of a song sparrow that had found a morsel for lunch. This bird was kind enough to pose for me on a dead branch not too far away.
By the first week of July, the young sparrows have fledged, so now they and their parents are much more likely to be seen. For a while, the youngsters are sluggish and very vulnerable, because it takes a while to learn to fly and to realize the dangers that they face.
July 6, 2001. 64 degrees high! Cloudy. A juvenile song sparrow was sitting listlessly – petrified of being out? It didn’t move more than once every 2-3 minutes, and then only about 6 inches.
July 7, 2006. In the afternoon, I worked clearing a trail on the Pearl Lake Road side of Creamery Pond. While sitting on rocks at the edge of the marsh, I saw song sparrows in front of me, white-throated sparrows singing in trees off to my right, and two sparrows coming right to a little clearing just a few feet away. They were as surprised to see me as I was to see them!
July 10, 2018. …When I swam up to the Point, a song sparrow flitting about in the nearby alder clump ignored me, though I was less than ten feet away! Apparently, the bird doesn’t expect and therefore doesn’t respond to a potential threat coming from the pond.
One year, I actually found a song sparrow’s nest, so I was able to record the entire sequence of events:
July 11, 2004, 75 degrees, partly cloudy, beautiful. I found a nest 1.5 feet off the ground in dense brush; it had a 3-inch hemispherical opening that was lined with fine grass. There were three light brown eggs with dark brown spots, approximately ½ inch long. On the 14th, there were only two eggs left. A sparrow-sized bird was sitting on the nest on July 15th, and there were still two eggs left. I think it was a song sparrow that was defending an area about 20 feet around its nest. At one point it chased a common yellowthroat away and looked over at the nest to make sure all was OK. It didn’t go back to its nest while I watched, nor did it fly at me.
July 22, 2004, 80 degrees, humid. There are three bluebird babies in the front house. Song sparrows have a nest by the black raspberries. Mom is in the nest with two recently hatched youngsters.
July 29, 2004, 80 degrees, partly cloudy, beautiful. The baby song sparrows are starting to get feathers. The baby bluebirds are much larger, and they are starting to show some blue.
August 1, 2004. The baby sparrows are alive and covered with down.
That was my last record of that family, but I’ll close out with a couple of subsequent observations of what these sparrows might have been doing for the next couple of weeks:
August 11, 2009. Two song sparrows were feeding on the lawn in the backyard. The adult would catch a bug, while junior begged for food. When Mom (Dad?) caught one, junior would walk over, tilt his (her?) head back, open wide – and Mom would stick the bug in his beak.
August 19, 2018, 76 degrees, partly cloudy, light breeze, beautiful! This morning I took photos and a video of a juvenile savannah sparrow preening with its notched tail spread as it sat in an apple tree in the Upper Meadow.
August 19, 2018. Song sparrows and savannah sparrows both nest in our region, and their young are similar in appearance. Another photo confirmed that this was a savannah sparrow because it had a notched tail. This youngster was just grooming itself, neither looking for insects nor seeking a bite of the apple.
By the end of August, the summer residents have departed, and we start to see the migrating sparrows returning from Canada, but that story can better be told when the asters are blooming, and the leaves are falling.
