song sparrow behavior | Lillian DarnellLillian Darnell

Hi there! My mother, Camilla, suggested that I write a series of posts about birds on my blog since I’ve been talking about them and learning about them. Please let me know if you have any bird books, CDs, or a website you’d recommend! Here is the part about Song Sparrows.

Song Sparrows are medium-sized and fairly bulky sparrows. For a sparrow, the bill is short and stout and the head fairly rounded. The tail is long and rounded, and the wings are broad. Song Sparrows are medium-sized and fairly bulky sparrows. For a sparrow, the bill is short and stout and the head fairly rounded.

The tail is long and rounded, and the wings are broad. Song Sparrows flit through dense, low vegetation or low branches, occasionally moving onto open ground after food. Flights are short and fluttering, with a characteristic downward pumping of the tail. Male Song Sparrows sing from exposed perches such as small trees. Look for Song Sparrows in almost any open habitat, like marsh edges, overgrown fields, backyards, desert washes, and forest edges.

Song Sparrows often visit bird feeders and build nests in human areas. Song Sparrows mostly find food in forages that are on the ground, sometimes scratching in the soil to turn up items. Also, sometimes forages in very shallow water (fractions of an inch deep) and up into shrubs and trees. They will come to bird feeders placed close to good protection.

The female song sparrow usually lays 4, often lays 3 to 5, rarely lays 2 to 6. The eggs are pale greenish white, heavily spotted with reddish brown. Incubation is obviously by female only, about 12 to 14 days long. Young: Both parents feed the nestlings. Young regularly leave the nest about 10 to 12 days after hatching, and remain with their parents about another 3 weeks.

They mainly insects and seeds. They eat many insects, especially in the summer, including beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars, ants, wasps, and many others, also spiders. They eat heavily on seeds, especially in the winter, mainly the seeds of grasses and weeds. Birds in coastal marshes and on islands also feed on small crustaceans and mollusks, perhaps very rarely on small fish.

Males often defend only small nesting territories, so high densities of Song Sparrows may be present in good habitat. In courtship, male may chase female; may perform fluttering flight among the bushes with neck outstretched and head held high. Nest site varies, usually on ground under clump of grass or shrub, or less than 4′ above the ground, sometimes up to 10′ or higher. Raised sites may be in shrubs, low trees, or marsh vegetation, often above water. Rarely nests in cavities in trees. Nest (built mostly or entirely by female) is an open cup of weeds, grass, leaves, strips of bark, lined with fine grass, rootlets, animal hair.

The song swallow is present all year in many parts of the USA, but birds from northern interior move south to southern United States or extreme northern Mexico in the winter.