Classic Song Sparrow (left) and White-throated Sparrow (right).
Nobody could mistake a Song Sparrow for a White-throated Sparrow, right? The two don’t look anything alike. One has a streaked breast, often a central breast spot, and a prominent malar stripe or mustache. The other has an unmarked breast, prominent white throat, and yellow between the eyes and bill. Think again.
Streaked breast, central breast spot, prominent malar stripe–classic Song Sparrow, right? Nope!
What if you were a new birder and you saw this bird in your yard with a junco. Maybe you haven’t seen that many sparrows before. You thumb through your book, and you see read that Song Sparrow has a “striped face, streaks on the chest often run together into a central blotch” (Kaufman Guide) or that it is “coarsely streaked, with bold brown lateral throat-stripe and central breast-spot” (Sibley Guide). You look back at the bird. Three field marks tell you that this is a Song Sparrow.
Except it isn’t. Most experienced birders would have no trouble telling that this is a first winter White-throated Sparrow. But it isn’t even on the same page as the Song Sparrow in most guides, so how’s a novice to know?
This post really isn’t about how to tell the two apart, but more of a reminder of a few bird identification pitfalls.
We often say that you should ID a bird on more than one field mark. In this case, without knowing better, you could make the ID based on three prominently mentioned classic field marks and still be wrong. Bird descriptions and illustrations are usually helpful, but more so with experience. We have to learn how to see birds. Without experience, we often don’t know how to interpret what we are seeing.
And this doesn’t just go for new birders. All of us have the potential to bump up against our experience gaps. It may even happen more than we think. How often do we make hasty calls, and if nobody is there to correct us, we are none the wiser.
How often do novices mistake young White-throated Sparrows for Song Sparrows? Who knows? Since they are both common in the Eastern US, it isn’t a mistake easily caught in eBird or elsewhere. In the West, where White-throated Sparrows are less common, they would be more likely to be overlooked so the mistake might not be caught.
Since we all have to learn to see birds and how to interpret what we see, we should all be careful when we discuss bird ID with others. Especially when dealing with a novice or non-birder. Who knows what they are seeing? You don’t have to be birding too long before you realize that not everyone sees the same thing when they are looking at a bird. It takes birding socialization to align our perceptions with those of others.
So even if you think you could never mis-ID these two birds, perhaps there are still some valuable lessons to ponder from the Song vs. White-throated Sparrow ID dilemma?
