Eight Sparrows

It has been quite some time since my last post - since January 29, to be exact. No particular reason, life just tends to get busy this time of year for us. Still, I have managed at least a little time with my camera and the birds. On Tuesday this week I realized I had observed eight species of sparrow within just a few miles of my house, one of which was a life bird (vesper sparrow), along with another seldom-seen species, the Henslow’s sparrow.

Henslow’s Sparrow (Centronyx henslowii) | Jefferson County, Kentucky

500mm | 1/1,600th second | f/8.0 | ISO 2200

Sparrows are small, usually brownish, like dense brush, have an uncanny knack for backlighting themselves, and are generally a pain to find and photograph, so it is always a bit of a chore to find a new one. I decided to share this week’s sparrow count because most “normal” people (i.e., non-birders) might be surprised to learn that there even ARE eight different species of sparrow, much less that you can find that many and more without leaving the city limits. In fact there are 138 species, and those are just the members of the family Passerellidae, the “New World sparrows.” The “Old World sparrows” of the family Passerellidae add yet another forty-three species, but are not actually that closely related to New World sparrows.

So what does it really mean when I say that I saw eight sparrows? That’s when the scientific names start to make a lot more sense than the common names, because eight is really just the number of New World sparrows I saw that happen to actually have the word “sparrow” in their name. In truth I saw ten New World sparrows - they are just not all called sparrows. The dark-eyed junco and eastern towhee I recorded are all part of the same family of Passerellidae. Here are Tuesday’s ten:

  1. Henslow’s Sparrow (Centronyx henslowii)

  2. Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)

  3. Swamp Sparrow (Melospiza georgiana)

  4. Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis)

  5. Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus)

  6. Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina)

  7. Field Sparrow (Spizella pussilla)

  8. White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)

  9. Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalumus)

  10. Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)

With the addition of the vesper, that makes twenty-three New World sparrows on my life list - only 120 to go!

Thanks for reading!

Greg

Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus) | Jefferson County, Kentucky

500mm | 1/2,000th second | f/8.0 | ISO 720