Brewer’s Sparrow

The Brewer’s Sparrow have popularly been discarded as some of the drabbest looking Sparrows in North America, but their inconspicuous appearance does little justice to their dynamic personalities. These Sparrows are desert birds and are mostly found in sagebrush shrublands that are occasionally mixed with other shrubs and grasses. They are the most abundant bird found in these ecosystems and are also some of North America’s smallest Sparrows.

About Brewer’s Sparrows

Like many other desert birds, Brewer’s Sparrows are capable of going weeks without drinking a single sip of water. They accomplish this incredible feat by relying solely on the liquid sourced from various plants and their insect prey. They are also regarded to be rather similar to the closely related Clay-colored Sparrows, both of which were cataloged by ornithologists in the 19th century. Today, we want to be delving into the life stories of these tough survivors. We will be touching upon:

● Brewer’s Sparrow Photos, Color Pattern, Song
● Brewer’s Sparrow Size, Eating Behavior, Habitat
● Brewer’s Sparrow Range and Migration, Nesting

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Brewer’s Sparrow Color Pattern

Brewer’s Sparrows are often described as donning extremely generic plumages. They are brown overall, with a finely streaked brown crown. Their eyes are encircled by a neat, white ring, while a pale “eyebrow” like mark is visible above their eyes. Their wings are brown and softly outlined with black, with grayish-white stripes appearing to give it a lower border. The wings can also have indistinct black streaks. Their underparts are dull white while their flanks are grayish. Adults do not have streaks on their breasts, but their flanks may sometimes be clearly streaked. The back and rump are brown, with the latter streaked with black. These birds retain their plumages throughout the year and are not known to be sexually dimorphic, meaning that adults of both sexes are identical to each other in plumage.

Juveniles look similar to adults but are more buffy overall, with markedly fewer amounts of gray. Their crown is also more finely streaked with rusty colors, and their pale “eyebrows” are less clearly defined. The main feature that differentiates them from adults is the lack of distinct brown streaks on their breasts and flanks.

Description and Identification

The first step to locating this small bird is to successfully locate its habitat. They are found breeding only in sagebrush and chaparral habitats, so the potential areas where one might spot them are narrowed down to one. In spring or early summer, the male’s long and trilled song is audible early in the morning. It is fairly recognizable and distinct from other calls in the regions. A small, gray-brown bird may also be spotted silently foraging within sagebrush or on the ground below a clump of brush. During the winters, they can be found in grasslands where there are large flocks of several species of Sparrows. In those cases, keep your eye out for the smallest Sparrow donning a long, notched tail.

Brewer’s Sparrow Song

Brewer’s Sparrows have two types of songs, a short song and a long song. Their long song has 5–10 notes that trill, sometimes described as “a Chipping Sparrow trying to sing like a Canary”. The long song can include a variety of buzzing, bubbling, wheezing, and trilling sounds. In contrast, their short song has a much higher frequency, with faster trills that are immediately followed by slower, low-frequency trills. The best rendering available for their short song is a “bzzzzzz, chip chip chip chip chip”. Some males can even sing a short song that has been popularly dubbed as a “reversed” version of the traditional ones.

While only males are known to sing, both sexes produce a call note. The call note is a weak “tsip, chip, or seep”, with little understandings of their contexts. Females may also utter a soft, twittering call around the nests. The contexts of their calls are not very well studied, but parallels can be drawn based on those uttered by Clay-colored Sparrows. Vocalizations among juveniles are currently not known, but the observation of shared song elements among birds suggests that the structure of the songs is learned rather than inherited.

Brewer’s Sparrow Size

Brewer’s Sparrows are dainty and slim birds that are about 5.1–5.9 inches in length. Their slender bodies weigh about 0.4–0.5 ounces, while their short and rounded wings have a wingspan of 7.1–7.9 inches. They have a long and notched tail, along with a small and sharply conical bill. Although their size varies from region to region, they are considered to
be North America’s smallest Sparrow.

Brewer’s Sparrow Behavior

These birds can be frequently observed hopping on the ground, occasionally even running. They hop and clamber about twigs and branches within shrubs as well. They take direct flights but rarely go above 1 meter in height, typically remaining at the average height of the shrub canopy. When disturbed, they fly readily from one shrub to another. Like other Sparrows, they are not known to swim or have any affinity with water.

Brewer’s Sparrows are also not aggressive outside of the breeding seasons. Males are responsible for claiming and defending a territory, while females generally secure the regions around the nest. When rival males are spotted, males pursue their opponents by engaging in chases. Chasing and fleeing are associated with the establishment and maintenance of territories early in the breeding season. While it is most frequently observed among males and their male opponents, females have also been observed to chase males that are not her mate if they venture too close to the nest site. Physical encounters are highly uncommon but may occur in extreme cases. During all other seasons, these birds can be frequently seen forming mixed-species flocks with other Sparrows.

Males arrive on breeding grounds several days before females and sing from visible perches to establish and defend breeding territories. Males offer food to their mates during the early phases of pair formation, with females initiating the courtship by quivering their wings and uttering a soft twittering call. After the nests are built, males remain in the immediate vicinity, fluctuating between foraging within shrubs and singing atop of them. Larger Sparrows often displace singing Brewer’s Sparrows from their perches, but these Sparrows often join forces to chaise away small mammalian nest predators.

Brewer’s Sparrow Diet

Brewer’s Sparrows mainly eat small insects during the breeding season, including caterpillars, leaf beetles, weevils, grasshoppers, ants, and other insects and spiders. This is done to consume the large amounts of protein required to raise nestlings. Their diet on their wintering grounds is poorly understood, but they most likely eat a larger proportion of seeds like other Sparrows. They glean insects from the bark and foliage of shrubs, and they pick up seeds from the ground. More than 75% of their time during the breeding season is spending foraging within shrubs, as opposed to foraging on the bare ground or at the base of bunchgrasses between shrubs.

Brewer’s Sparrow Habitat

Brewer’s Sparrows depend exclusively on brush habitats for survival. They are considered to be “sagebrush obligate” bird species, meaning that only sagebrush ecosystems suffice for their breeding habitats. These areas are almost entirely treeless and are dominated by large amounts of sagebrush and similar brushy species that can grow up to 5 feet tall. Large clearings of pinyon-juniper woodlands are also popular, as they share similar vegetation to sagebrush steppes. In contrast, in the northern subspecies, the Timberline Sparrow is a breed at extremely high vegetations, with the tall and dense vegetation provides birch shrubs of alpine valleys. During the winters, Sparrows of both subspecies occupy sagebrush shrublands, along with a range of desert scrub habitats of saltbush and creosote bush.

Range and Migration

Brewer’s Sparrows are short-distance migrants that are found breeding throughout the western half of the United States. Their breeding range extends from Washington and Montana, through California and Utah, to Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. Migration seasons usually take them through the states of Arizona and New Mexico, with few birds also opting for the route through the Baja California Peninsula. The wintering grounds are throughout most of Northern Mexico, where they share this habitat with other Sparrows like Black-throated Sparrows.

Brewer’s Sparrow Lifecycle

Females generally have a single brood in a season, but some regions of their range may raise up to 2 broods in a year. Each brood has a clutch size of 2–5 eggs, with presumably the female incubating the eggs for 10–12 days. It is unknown whether males play an active part in incubation or not. The eggs then hatch, and the chicks emerge helpless and naked except for sparse tufts of light gray natal down. Nestlings are most likely fed by both parents for at least 2 weeks, although young birds may leave the nest and begin moving about 8–9 days after hatching. The exact age at which they become capable of flight is not well-known.

Nesting

These birds select their nest sites at tall and densely branching shrubs, most frequently in big sagebrush species. The nest is placed just outside the densest parts of the shrub, safely at the highest levels of the brush where the sagebrush provides the maximum cover. These birds are very rarely seen nesting lower than 8 inches above the ground, remaining about 2–4 feet high.

Most of the nest-building is done by the females, generally taking anywhere between 2–5 days depending on the experience they have. A small cup of dry grasses is woven together, creating a layer that is combined with sagebrush twigs for a solid structure. The interiors are then lined with fine grasses, sagebrush bark, and sometimes animal hair if
available. The resulting proportions of these nests are about 3.5 inches across, with the diameter of the cup at 2 inches.

Anatomy of a Brewer’s Sparrow

Brewer’s Sparrows are dainty and slim birds that are about 5.1–5.9 inches in length. Their slender bodies weigh about 0.4–0.5 ounces, while their short and rounded wings have a wingspan of 7.1–7.9 inches. They have a long and notched tail, along with a small and sharply conical bill. Although their size varies from region to region, they are considered to
be North America’s smallest Sparrow.

Final Thoughts

Brewer’s Sparrows are the most abundantly found birds in sagebrush areas, accounting for a staggering proportion out of all the birds found in this ecosystem. However, their total populations have suffered from a decline of at least 50% since the late 1960s. As with other birds from sagebrush ecosystems, their mean threats include livestock grazing, residential and energy development, agricultural conversion, and invasive species like cheatgrass that prevent their preferred trees from growing.

These birds are pure desert beings, from their lifestyle adaptations to their inconspicuous plumages. They can go for weeks without drinking water, a necessary trait for surviving in the arid climates of sagebrush and desert grasslands. Their vocalizations are also softer compared to other Sparrows, but choruses of male’s long songs echo through the
landscapes on the rare occasions that it occurs. They are one of the many wonderful treasures of nature and a reminder of some of the world’s most hardened survivors.

Ornithology

Bird Watching Academy & Camp Subscription Boxes

At the Bird Watching Academy & Camp we help kids, youth, and adults get excited and involved in bird watching. We have several monthly subscription boxes that you can subscribe to. Our monthly subscription boxes help kids, youth, and adults learn about birds, bird watching, and bird conservation.

Bird Watching Binoculars for Identifying Brewer’s Sparrows

The most common types of bird watching binoculars for viewing Brewer’s Sparrows are 8×21 binoculars and 10×42 binoculars. Bird Watching Academy & Camp sells really nice 8×21 binoculars and 10×42 binoculars. You can view and purchase them here.

Brewer’s Sparrow Stickers

Stickers are a great way for you to display your love for bird watching and the Brewer’s Sparrow. We sell a monthly subscription sticker pack. The sticker packs have 12 bird stickers. These sticker packs will help your kids learn new birds every month.

Bird Feeders For Brewer’s Sparrows

There are many types of bird feeders. Bird feeders are a great addition to your backyard. Bird feeders will increase the chances of attracting birds drastically. Both kids and adults will have a great time watching birds eat at these bird feeders. There are a wide variety of bird feeders on the market and it is important to find the best fit for you and your backyard.

Bird HousesFor Brewer’s Sparrows

There are many types of bird houses. Building a bird house is always fun but can be frustrating. Getting a bird house for kids to watch birds grow is always fun. If you spend a little extra money on bird houses, it will be well worth every penny and they’ll look great.