Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The White-Throated Sparrow

By: Tom Berg

Most people have trouble identifying sparrows. After all, there are many different species and some of them look very similar to each other. They are called “little brown birds” by lots of people, simply because that’s a pretty good description and it’s easier than figuring out the identity of each individual sparrow.

White-throated sparrows, however, are fairly easy to identify. Of course they are the same size as most sparrows, and they are mostly brown in color, too. But the color pattern on their head is hard to forget. Their head sports black and white stripes, punctuated by a bright yellow spot, or lore, between their eye and their beak. They also have a pure white throat that is easy to see above their pale gray breast.

These birds are common across most of the United States, but after their spring migration most of the population is up in the forests of Canada for the breeding season. When building a nest, most white-throated sparrows choose a site on the ground or in a low bush. If their nest gets raided by a fox or other predator, they may make a second nesting attempt – but this time it will be several feet off the ground in a pine or spruce tree.

The white-throated sparrow is mostly a seed-eater and a ground forager, and they happily eat all sorts of grass and weed seeds. They also enjoy small fruits like blueberries, raspberries, grapes and sumac. When insects are abundant, they take advantage of that food source as well, catching most of their insect prey right on the ground. Spiders, ants, centipedes and beetles are some of their favorites.

One interesting thing about white-throated sparrows is that some individuals have black and tan stripes on their heads rather than the normal black and white stripes. Besides the difference in color, the birds of these two color morphs have slightly different behaviors. Males with white stripes are often more aggressive than those with tan stripes. The white-striped males also sing more than their tan-striped counterparts. Although white-striped females do some singing, tan-striped females rarely sing. It’s a strange world out there!

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