How to Identify aAmerican Tree Sparrow
Spizelloides arborea · 5.5 in (14 cm)
Male vs. female
Male
Rusty crown and eye-line, gray face and chest with a single dark central spot, and a bill dark above and yellow below. Sexes look alike.
Female
Identical to the male in the field.
Male photo: Fyn Kynd / Wikimedia, CC BY 2.0 · Second photo: Rhododendrites / Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Field marks
- Single dark spot on a plain gray chest
- Bill dark above, yellow below
- Rusty crown and rusty line behind the eye
- Two thin white wingbars
Similar species
What it sounds like
A sweet, high, whistled opening followed by a warbled jumble; a musical "teel-wit" call in flight.
Behaviour that gives it away
Needs to eat about its own weight in seed each winter day, and will starve within a day without food in hard cold.
Habitat & range
Weedy fields, hedgerows, marsh edges and feeders across the northern states in winter; Arctic scrub in summer.
When you'll see it
A winter visitor in northern, central and eastern North America.
What it eats
Weed and grass seeds in winter, insects on the Arctic breeding grounds.
Did you know?
Despite the name it nests on the Arctic tundra, largely beyond the northern limit of trees.
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