Field Sparrow

                                                Field Sparrow   [Jim Carroll Photo]

The Field Sparrow (Spizella pusilla) is a rare migrant to New Brunswick.  We usually see it here in the spring and fall.  A few years ago I found one in Keswick Ridge where it remained for the summer.  This species was first reported in NB in 1935 from Grand Manan.  It nests here only exceptionally with a nest being found in Fredericton in 1972 and a fledgling seen at Brockway in 2001.

The individual shown above was photographed at Black Beach near Lorneville on October 24, 2021.  The area was alive with sparrows which were feeding prior to continuing their migration across the Bay of Fundy on their route southward down the Maine coast and further.  Along with the Field Sparrow were White-throated Sparrows, Song Sparrows and Swamp Sparrows.  The Field Sparrow was very light-coloured among the others and quickly found cover in the alder thickets away from birders and the many visitors there.

                                                        Field Sparrow   [Jim Carroll Photo]

The Field Sparrow is a medium-sized sparrow, 14 cm  (6 in) long from the family, Passerellidae.  Its identifying features are the complete white eyering, entirely pink bill, and unstreaked breast.  It has a gray head with a rust-coloured crown, the overall plumage is gray, rufous and buff, and the legs are pink.  The belly is white and the tail is slightly forked.  Overall it presents as a very light-coloured sparrow with an eyering.

Sparrows can be difficult to differentiate so what other sparrow species do you need to tell it from?  The American Tree Sparrow is similar but it is normally a winter species here.  The American Tree Sparrow has a black central spot on an unstreaked breast and a 2-toned bill.  The Chipping Sparrow also has a rufous crown but it has a dark eye line and does not show any buff colour.  It has a dark bill and no eyering.

We are beyond the normal range of the Field Sparrow so what ones we get here are vagrants.  This species breeds from Saskatchewan, Minnesota, northern Wisconsin and southern Ontario and Quebec south to Georgia, Mississippi. Louisiana and Texas.  It spends winters south to the Gulf of Mexico and northeastern Mexico.  Its preferred habitat is bushy fields and overgrown pasture.  The habitat I found the summering individual in at Keswick was in a school yard with playing fields, alder thickets and scrub forest nearby. 

 

                            

                                                       Field Sparrow   [Internet Photo]

The Field Sparrow places its nest on or near the ground.  It is a woven cup of grass lined with rootlets and fine grass.  Two to six white eggs marked with brown are incubated by the female for 10 to 17 days.  Field sparrows forage on the ground feeding on seeds and insects.  They will often land on the seed head of tall grasses, bending the stem to the ground so they can feed.

The call of this species is distinctive.  In fact, that is the way I found the summer-residing individual.  Its call is described in various ways.  The literature describes it as a 'sad whistle ending in a trill' or 'a series of soft, plaintive notes, all of the same pitch, accelerating to a trill at the end'.  Both of these are accurate but what was more descriptive for me was the call described as someone dropping a ping-pong ball on a table and the notes beginning slowly as the ball bounced and getting steadily faster and faster until they melt into a blurred sound.  That is how I have found Field Sparrows many times over the years in various places outside of NB.  

The population of the Field Sparrow historically expanded as settlers cleared the forests of North America.   Ornithologists suspect their numbers have declined in late years but the species is still listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as 'least concern'.