Black-chinned Sparrow

About the Black-chinned Sparrow

A slim, understated sparrow with a soft gray head and body, a warm streaked back, and a bright pink bill, the breeding male adds the neat black chin and throat that give the bird its name. It is a subtle beauty, easy to overlook until it sings.

Black-chinned Sparrows favor dry, brushy slopes and chaparral-like scrub on arid hillsides, where they forage low for seeds and insects. The male's song is a distinctive accelerating series of notes - often likened to a bouncing ball coming to rest - delivered from the top of a shrub.

In Texas they are warm-season breeders of the Trans-Pecos mountains and dry western slopes, arriving in spring to the rocky, scrubby hillsides and slipping south again in fall.

A note from behind the lens: listen first - that ricocheting song will lead you to a singing male perched atop a low shrub. Approach slowly, keep the background clean and distant, and let the pink bill and gray-and-black head stand out against the muted brush.