Lincoln's Sparrow
Melospiza lincolnii
Also known as: Lincoln Sparrow, Lincoln Finch
About This Species
This secretive sparrow favours dense, shrubby wetland edges, boggy thickets, and willow scrub, where it tends to stay low and skulk rather than perch in the open, making patience more useful than a fast search. Its buzzy, bubbling song, often compared to a wren crossed with a house finch, is usually the best way to locate one, since it can be heard well before it is seen. Spring migration and the breeding season in boreal and montane wetlands offer the most reliable song activity, while migrants can turn up briefly in brushy cover almost anywhere along the way.
Ethical Viewing Guidelines
- Stay on trails and boardwalks around wet, shrubby habitat rather than pushing into dense cover to flush a bird for a better view, since this species relies on that same tangled vegetation for nesting and cover from predators.
- Protections for migratory songbirds are broadly in place across its range, though the details differ between countries, so treat any nesting habitat as sensitive rather than assuming a specific rule everywhere.
- If a bird goes quiet and stops singing as you approach, it has likely noticed you and moving back will encourage it to resume normal behaviour.
Seasonal Activity
1,833,852 sightings · 2000–2026
Citizen science records via GBIF
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Passerellidae
Photo
Wikimedia Commons / Wikimedia Commons
CC-BY-SA-4.0
Occurrence data from GBIF.