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Field Sparrow | Spizella pusilla
Veldgors | Gorrión llanero
The Field Sparrow is a small, plain sparrow with a pink bill, a white eye-ring and a rufous crown. It breeds in eastern North America and reaches the guide area only as a winter visitor to north-eastern Mexico. The closely related Worthen's Sparrow is a resident of the plateau in the same part of Mexico.
Voice
The song is a series of clear, whistled notes that accelerate, like a bouncing ball: choo choo choo-chu-chuchuchurrr. The call is a high, sharp chip.
Recording: Mario Reyes Jr — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–15 cm. Small and slim, with a fairly long tail. Bill and legs pink. Head grey with a rufous crown, often with a grey median stripe, a narrow rufous stripe behind the eye and a distinct white eye-ring. Back brown with black streaks, wings with two white wing bars. Underparts unstreaked, breast and flanks pale buff, belly white. The sexes are alike; juveniles are finely streaked on the breast.
Confusion species
Worthen's Sparrow Spizella wortheni is very similar, but has a plain grey face without a rufous stripe behind the eye, a greyer breast and a more uniformly rufous crown; it is resident on the plateau of Coahuila, Nuevo León, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí. Chipping Sparrow Spizella passerina and Clay-colored Sparrow Spizella pallida have a dark eye-stripe or an outlined cheek patch and lack the combination of pink bill and white eye-ring in a grey face. Black-chinned Sparrow Spizella atrogularis has a plain grey head and underparts.
Habitat
In winter rank grassland, fallow fields, shrubby pasture, field edges and the edges of thornscrub. It forages for seeds on the ground in small groups, often with other sparrows, and flies into dense shrubs when disturbed.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Breeds in the eastern and central United States and extreme south-eastern Canada. Northern birds move south; the species winters in the southern United States and in north-eastern Mexico, mainly in Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, scarcer further south and west.
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In winter best looked for in small mixed flocks of sparrows along scrubby edges; the pink bill and the white eye-ring in the grey face can be seen even at some distance.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Still common, but in North America it has declined steeply since the 1960s through abandoned farmland growing back into forest and the conversion of rough ground into intensive cropland or built-up areas.
Scientific name
Spizella pusilla | (Wilson, 1810)
Wilson described the species in 1810 as Fringilla pusilla; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Spizella was introduced in 1831 by Bonaparte. Spizella is a diminutive of the Greek spiza 'finch': 'little finch'. pusilla is Latin for 'very small', after its small size. The specimen the first description was based on came from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA).