Some sparrows wheel about in flocks—tree sparrows and white-crowned sparrows move through October with the hurried awareness of waning daylight, lunging at seed from grasses and asters. Other sparrows, like the LeConte’s, harbor a more solitary nature.
LeConte’s sparrow, photo by Frank D. Lospalluto
A resident of northern Wisconsin sedge meadows, open bogs, and idle grasslands, the LeConte’s sparrow lives a life of relative calm and simplicity. Wisconsin lies on the edge of this bird’s range, which extends into Canada, while the core breeding in the United States is the prairie pothole region of the Dakotas where densities of birds can reach 50/100ha; this is a northern prairie species, at the southeastern edge of its range in Wisconsin—there were just four breeding confirmations during Wisconsin’s second breeding bird Atlas. Its song girds the meek nature of this bird, a simple two or three-syllabled buzz that sounds more katydid than passerine.
LeConte’s Sparrow range map by The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
A 1969 study of the bird in Wisconsin found 89 singing males, but only 8 of those birds were exposed enough to see. The LeConte’s sparrows are notorious for their sulking in dense grass and cover, low to the ground, to the extent that it took 100 years once the species was described to simply find its nest.
Here at Faville Grove, are at the extreme southern limits of the bird’s breeding range. This past summer, the interns and I heard a buzzing song in Helga’s Prairie, a twenty year old prairie restoration adjacent to an open sphagnum bog mat. I heard the song in the periphery once, then again, and it came crashing to me with excitement… could this be a LeConte’s sparrow on breeding territory? I commanded the interns to stop our sweep for invasive weeds, everyone froze, and we waited there for about ten minutes. Not a peep. One of the interns also hear the song, and I played back a recording on my Sibley app; he agreed it sounded almost the same. Subsequent searches in the early morning turned up nothing. Was this a breeding LeConte’s, a lone male knocked off course, or a katydid? If it were a LeConte’s, it would be a characteristic encounter; barely heard and unseen, quickly vanishing into the grass and sedge matrix.
LeConte’s Sparrow, photo by Nick Varvel
Just this past week, I had another encounter with a LeConte’s, and this time I got terrific looks at the bird. On my knees collecting mountain mint seed in Charles Prairie, a little bustle in the nearby grass revealed a bird. Perched halfway up the Indiangrass, and backlit by the setting sun, the bird’s short, pointed tail, small bill, and orange and buffy face and sides, and yellowish body with streaks as crisp as that autumn day led me to a LeConte’s sparrow. This was likely a migrant from northern Wisconsin or Canada, but perhaps next spring the bird will find the open bogs, sedge meadows, and tall grasses of Faville Grove a suitable spot to rear young.
Written by Drew Harry, Faville Grove Sanctuary land steward
