Field Sparrow

About the Field Sparrow

The Field Sparrow is a small, gentle-faced sparrow of old fields - warm rusty cap, plain gray face with a thin white eye-ring, unstreaked buffy breast, and a bright pink bill that separates it from every similar sparrow.

It feeds quietly on grass seeds and insects near the ground and would go unnoticed except for the song: a series of sweet, downslurred whistles that accelerate into a trill, often compared to a bouncing ball coming to rest. Males sing from low perches at the edge of brushy pastures. The nest is a grass cup hidden near the ground in a shrub or grass clump.

Field Sparrows are year-round residents across most of Texas, joined by northern migrants in winter, though the species has declined continent-wide as old fields grow up or get cleared.