Clay-colored Sparrow

About the Clay-colored Sparrow

The Clay-colored Sparrow is a small, neat, pale sparrow of open brush - buffy gray-brown above with crisp dark streaks, a cleanly outlined brown cheek patch, pale central crown stripe, and an unstreaked gray nape that is one of its best field marks. It is a subtler bird than many sparrows, identified by pattern rather than color.

On the northern prairies where it breeds, the male gives one of the least musical songs in the sparrow family - a series of flat, insect-like buzzes. Migrants and wintering birds travel in loose flocks, often with Chipping and Brewer's Sparrows, feeding on seeds low in weeds and brush and flushing up into thorn scrub when disturbed.

In Texas the Clay-colored Sparrow is a common migrant statewide in spring and fall, and a winter resident of the South Texas brush country, where mixed sparrow flocks work the mesquite and prickly pear edges.