I’ve been trying to ID a brown bird I see every autumn for years now. It’s got white on the sides of its tail and is found in our pastures. Why has it been so hard?
There are LOTS of those tricky little brown birds here in the middle of Texas in the post oak savanna. In addition to the easily spotted house sparrows, there are savannah sparrows, vesper sparrows, lark sparrows, swamp sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, Harris’s sparrows, and maybe more. Some are easy, some are hard to ID visually.
That’s why I must once again praise Merlin Bird ID. It’s helped me figure out what I’m seeing SO much. And yesterday and today I was able to figure out what that mysterious brown bird of autumn is, and it’s not a sparrow.
It’s also not a meadowlark, which also has white along it’s tail feathers and a brown back. It does have a beautiful song, like the meadowlark, though.
It’s an American pipit. Or it’s a Sprague’s pipit. They aren’t even related to sparrows, which is obvious if you look at their bills. They have the sharp bill of an insectivore. I know that because Merlin heard them calling.
I then read the description and had a “doh” moment. That’s exactly what I’ve been looking at in the fields.
With my love of identification and categorization of what’s around me, I’m quite satisfied right now. Pipit. Yeah. Turns out they’re not even uncommon. Huh.
It’s a good bird time right now and will only get better. I’m sad to see summer birds go, but meadowlarks and all those sparrows fill the air with song. Plus the phoebes are screeching and the shrikes are shrieking. The kingfisher is back, too!
And hey, only one bur today on Apache’s man bun and zero on Drew. I want to credit my braiding, but I think the new hay has kept them out of bur world.
The Hermits' Rest 