Maine’s most brightly colored songbirds will begin to arrive in two weeks. Meanwhile, we’re stuck with all the little brown ones, as nature tries to convince us that we can’t identify sparrows.
Sparrows glean insects and other invertebrates in summer. For the rest of the year, they dine primarily on seeds and fruit. They don’t have to migrate very far south to find the food they need in winter, nor do they have to wait for Maine’s bumper crop of insects before returning home in spring.
Most sparrows arrive in April, weeks ahead of warblers and other bug-eaters.
Before they test your patience again this year, it helps to know a few secrets. Sure, most sparrows are various shades of brown, usually streaky. At first glance, they all look alike.
But each species spins off its own set of identity clues. As usual, the key to making faster bird identifications is to sort them out into small piles.
About half of Maine’s sparrows have plain white breasts. The rest have streaked breasts. In springtime, this single field mark automatically cuts the number of likely candidates in half. Later in summer, most young sparrows have streaky breasts, but you can ignore them for now.
Several sparrows have reddish caps. Chipping sparrows and American tree sparrows look similar, but the latter nests in northern Canada. It’s only a winter bird in Maine, and it departs about the same time chipping sparrows arrive. Mine left this week.
The biggest clue to a sparrow’s identity is location, not appearance. Most sparrows are specialists, confining themselves to one specific habitat. You can often tell what it is by observing where it is.
To make it easier, song sparrows are the exception to the rule. They are generalists. They are everywhere. There’s one in your backyard. It’s the sparrow you see most often, by far. Song sparrows also sing so much that they’re hard to miss.
Two sparrows are common within their respective niches. Chipping sparrows are found in open areas everywhere. They like neighborhoods, parks and campuses, but you can also find them along the edges of logging roads.
White-throated sparrows nest along forest edges throughout Maine.
Where would you look for a swamp sparrow? They are all returning this week, setting up territories in just about any wetland with a cattail. Their slow trills will echo over every marsh for the next two months.
Savannah sparrows are so attached to fields that they even nest on the ground in the middle of all that grass. If you’re in a field in eastern Maine, and you see a sparrow pop up in the grass or drop down into it — it’s invariably a savannah sparrow. They also like blueberry barrens.
Field sparrows inhabit fields, too, but they tend to hang around the edges, nesting beneath shrubs and in low tree branches. Bangor is about the northern limit for field sparrows. They’re more common in southern Maine.
Grasshopper sparrows nest here, barely, in a few scrubby southern Maine fields. Personally, I’ve never seen one north of Kennebunk. Clay-colored sparrows nest sporadically in the same scrub-field habitats.
Vesper sparrows are prairie birds west of the Mississippi, but blueberry barrens look enough like prairie that they also nest here in Maine. Except in migration, you’ll rarely see them away from blueberries.
Fox sparrows are confined to the spruce forests and mountaintops of northern Maine.
Lincoln’s sparrows are found exclusively in boggy areas. On a quiet spring morning, you can hear them sing along the Orono Bog Boardwalk.
Two Maine-breeding sparrows are confined to salt marshes. Once known as sharp-tailed sparrows, Nelson’s sparrow and saltmarsh sparrow were reclassified as two separate species in 1995.
Though the birds are nearly identical, the streaks on the breast of the Nelson’s sparrow are noticeably blurrier at close range.
Here again, location matters. Both sparrows nest side-by-side in Scarborough Marsh. The overlap in range continues north to Weskeag Marsh in Thomaston.
Everything north of there is a Nelson’s sparrow; everything south of the overlap zone is a saltmarsh sparrow. Neither is seen away from the coast.
To the surprise of many, dark-eyed juncos are in the sparrow family, despite the lack of brown feathers. They are one of the most widespread sparrows on the continent. In Maine, they’re easily found along the edge of every forest.
Many birders give up on trying to identify sparrows. But if ever there was a good time to practice, this is it.
