White-Crowned Sparrow . . . if you think of sparrows as “Little Brown Jobs,” the White-Crowned may change your mind. Not only do matures have striking black head stripes with a white crown, they are also 7 inches long and more the size of a Northern Cardinal, not the average 5” size of many sparrows.
Immatures have brown instead of black head stripes and their breasts are more rippled.
Fitting that we feature the White-Crowned Sparrow during the Sochi Winter Olympics, since they are quite athletic and are commonly known to fly 300 miles in one day. They also frequently sing, even in winter, and are known to form song patterns from their birth territories.
You’ll find White-Crowned Sparrows where brushy areas meet grasslands, where they consume seeds and insects. They will come to bird feeders, but winter here for our winter days when insects come out as well as the seeds found in grassy areas gone to seed.
The White-Crowned have such distinct patterns, they are the featured illustration to learn “bird topography” in Bill Thompson’s and editors of Bird Watchers Digest book Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges. This book is extremely helpful because it's more about identification than anatomy.(Our Fort Bend County Library has this book and a very good selection of books on birding as well as gardening.)
Even "immatures" (see below) show the crown, only in brown and beige rather than black and white.
Other larger sparrows with distinctive patterns that winter in Fort Bend County Texas are Harris’s Sparrows and White Throated Sparrows. White-Crowned will not chase them from territories, but will bully Chipping Sparrows and Juncos from their breeding and feeding territories.
Learn about Project FeederWatch which occurs from November to April . . . anyone can help keep count of the birds on feeders and it makes for some great family fun! Learn more.
Photos copyrighted by Quail Valley resident and international birder Margaret Sloan. View her international and national bird pictures by pressing this link.
See a bird you don't recognize in Fort Bend? Margaret has photographed 150+ bird species just in her suburban Fort Bend,Texas backyard alone. Narrow your initial search by viewing her full photo album of local birds, Birds of Quail Valley by pressing this link. They are organized by types of birds, so if it's a water bird for example, you may find one that helps you narrow your search. Then if you "google in" the name of the bird, you'll get info and all kinds of information and images. Sometimes if a species is remarkably different from adult you may find nothing, contact us and we'll do our best to help.
Researched and posted by Janice Scanlan. Click photos to enlarge them.
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