Brewer's Sparrow

Overview

Brewer's Sparrow: Medium sparrow with finely streaked gray-brown upperparts, pale eye-ring, dark moustache stripe, and plain, pale gray underparts. Bill is pink with dark tip. Legs and feet are gray-pink. Short flights with rapidly beating wing strokes alternating with wings pulled briefly to sides.

Range and Habitat

Brewer's Sparrow: Breeds in northern Rocky Mountains of the Yukon and British Columbia and in the Great Basin south to southern California and New Mexico. Spends winters in southwestern states and is absent from the Pacific coast. Preferred habitats include sagebrush and alpine meadows.

INTERESTING FACTS

In the future, the Brewer's Sparrow may be split into two separate species - one subspecies, the Timberline Sparrow, differs in appearance, song, breeding range and habitat.

Males have 2 distinct types of songs - classified as short and long songs. The songs are a varied mix of notes and trills.
This sparrow is unusual in having two distinct nesting populations, one in the alpine meadows of the Rocky Mountains of the Yukon and the other in the sagebrush deserts of the western United States.
A group of sparrows has many collective nouns, including a "crew", "flutter", "meinie", "quarrel", and "ubiquity" of sparrows.

The Brewer's Sparrow has a range that extends to the bulk of North America. Native to the United States and Canada, it migrates in winters to the southwestern United States and Mexico. It prefers temperate climates, residing in shrubland and grassland habitats. It has a rich population. The population of this bird is declining due to reduction of shrublands, but it is still outside the threshold for inclusion to the IUCN Red List. The current evaluation status of Brewer's Sparrow is Least Concern.