Bird of the Month - November 2003
 

Lincoln’s Sparrow

Melospiza lincolnii

by David Fix

In the course of leading trips to Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge over the past ten years, no bird has given Jude Power and I greater delight in sharing with others than Lincoln’s Sparrow.  So frequently have we turned people on to this little skulker of the weed patches that it has become perhaps our favorite species to be anticipated during the monthly walks at the refuge.  Tiny, trim, and marked with intricate browns and grays, this is a sparrow known only to those who deliberately look for the birds of hedgerows and unmanaged lands.  Although they are well known for remaining half-hidden even while close-at-hand, patient birders will be rewarded with good looks at these exquisitely-patterned sparrows when at last one elects to linger atop a protruding fennel stalk or loop of blackberry cane.

Lincoln’s Sparrows spend the summer in shrubby marshes, muskeg, and around beaver ponds and lakeshores across the northern forests of Alaska and Canada.  Similar habitats at higher elevations in the mountains of the western U.S. are also inhabited—a few pairs nest about the headwaters of drainages originating in Klamath Mountains in the interior of the Redwood Region.  Unable to persist in such places during the colder months, a southward exodus brings these birds to our area.  Beginning in late September, weedy and swampy places support large numbers of Lincoln’s Sparrows.  Many of these birds surely pass through to winter farther south, yet this is a routine winter sparrow in the lowlands, remaining until mid-to-late April.  Favored sites support a rank growth of tall forbs, grass clumps, rushes, scattered saplings, blackberry mounds, and the like.  A bit of surface water may be present.  This nondescript and unheralded—yet often quite birdy--habitat is sometimes referred to by birders as ‘kack’.  Song Sparrows, Marsh Wrens, Virginia Rails, Black Phoebes, and Audubon’s Warblers share kack habitats with Lincoln’s Sparrows during the months the latter species is present in our area. 

Though eventually well-learned by most birders, one’s first few Lincoln’s Sparrows typically are confusing;  they bear a resemblance to both Song and Savannah Sparrows.  Lincoln’s are best known by their unique pattern of thin, short dark upper breast streakings set upon a pale buffy-brown wash; below this, the underparts are largely white.  The head is marked with a crowded pattern of dark brown and gray streaks; a flaring black mark behind the eye and a pale creamy ‘mustache’ are easily seen with in a good study.  These sparrows look remarkably thin-headed in a front-on view; I think of them as the “Narrow Sparrow.”  Given their habit of remaining near the ground and only hesitantly emerging into the open, the nickname “Slinkin’ Sparrow” also applies.

Birders who enjoy looking over our fall and winter sparrow flocks ultimately recognize just how common these birds can be in appropriate habitat.  In time, many Lincoln's Sparrows can be known not by sight, but by sound.  They utter two call-notes which are unlike each other:  a dreamy eentz —often given as they fly off—and a soft but penetrating chik  which suggests a [Sooty] Fox Sparrow but is not as loud or persistently repeated.