Field Sparrow
Spizella pusilla
About This Species
This small sparrow favors overgrown fields, shrubby pastures, and woodland edges with scattered saplings rather than dense forest or bare ground, across much of the eastern and central United States. Its song, a series of clear whistled notes accelerating into a bouncing-ball trill, is a distinctive and reliable way to locate it in brushy habitat during spring and summer. Look for its plain gray face, pink bill, and rusty cap, often perched low on a bush or fence rather than high in a tree.
Ethical Viewing Guidelines
- A slow approach along field edges, stopping well short of dense brush where a nest might be hidden low in a shrub, is enough to see this species without disturbing it.
- It is protected under migratory bird treaty legislation in the United States, which makes it illegal to disturb active nests, and this species nests low enough to be vulnerable to trampling in overgrown fields, so staying on mowed paths during the May to August breeding season is a sensible precaution.
- Otherwise it tolerates ordinary birdwatching distances well.
LCAvesPasseriformesPasserellidae
Seasonal Activity
2,850,818 sightings · 2000–2026
Citizen science records via GBIF
All monthsThis month
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Passerellidae
Photo
(c) Greg Lasley, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Greg Lasley
CC-BY-NC-4.0
Occurrence data from GBIF.