For The Birds: What’s Your Name, Little Bird?

By Christine Southwick

You have a bird on the ground in your yard that doesn’t look like the birds you know.

From March thru July-August in this area birds are raising babies, usually 1-4 broods of 2-5 each.

Juvenile American Robin with breast spots
Photo by Craig Kerns

Fledgling birds have just left their nests and often don’t look like their parents.

Chickadees, nuthatches, and brown treecreepers look like their parents, except that the young are fresh looking, while the harried parents look bedraggled.

Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers have temporary red spots on the top of their heads, presumably to help the parents locate them in multi-nested snags. Pileated Woodpeckers have orangish-pink top knots that don’t change until the next spring. So unidentified birds are probably not one of these.

Tree nesting birds seem to be a mixed bag; American Robins are speckled. Golden-crowned Kinglets look like their parents, but with brilliant gapes. Gapes are the swollen mouth lining, which become adult coloring as they mature.

Ground birds seem to have camouflage, while cavity nesters mostly look like their parents.

Juvenile junco showing pink feet, stripy heady and white outer-edge tail feathers.
Photo by Craig Kerns

So how to identify these mystery birds?

First, where do you usually see it? On the ground or a deck? In shrubs? High up in trees?

*FOUR CLUES FOR IDENTIFICATION *

HOW BIG IS THE BIRD, WHAT IS SHAPE OF BILL?

Oregon Juncos have a smallish pink bill (and legs); Spotted Towhees look like a large sparrow and have a large dark bill.

COLOR PATTERN:

Color is often different in juveniles, but there may be some clues:

Stripy Oregon Juncos (our sub-species of Dark-eyed Juncos) Look for the white outer tail feathers as they fly.

Stripy birds will start changing their body feathers in July- August into adult plumage depending on when they fledged.

Spotted Towhee less than two weeks after fledging, note dark large bill
Photo by Christine Southwick

HABITAT:

Juncos are mostly on the ground and come out openly under feeders.

Spotted Towhees start out stripy, looking like large dark Song Sparrows. They have large dark bills, skulk around on the ground, under bushes, and often do a two-footed backward hop searching for seeds and bugs. About three weeks after fledging they start having rufus sides, and by the end of September they look mostly like adults.

Song Sparrows also look different, but there is such a variation in Song Sparrows they are usually overlooked as “little brown jobbies” anyway. If you see a stripy sparrow flying “bottom heavy” because it hasn’t grown its tail feathers yet, it is probably a juvie Song Sparrow!

Golden-crowned Kinglet with gape and yellow feet
Photo by Craig Kerns

BEHAVIOR:

Does it flick its wings or tail repeatedly? Is it moving from branch to branch constantly? Does it have yellow feet? It may have a yellow gape. That’s a young Golden-crowned Kinglet.

Hope that helps! Keep watching the birds, and remember that many birds are still nesting—don’t clean up all the nesting places of weeds and leaves, yet…