This widespread sparrow of the South American grasslands has the general gestalt of our Grasshopper Sparrow which it shares its genus with. One distinctive difference is the yellow at the bend of the wing. I took these photos during my trip to the Pantanal in Brazil where we saw several.
This sparrow is mostly found in Mexico but has some populations in southeast Arizona and the very southern tip of Texas. It looks very similar to its genus mate the Bachmann's Sparrow which is a specialty bird of my home state of NC. Much like the Bachmann's, the easiest way to find it is to listen for the distinctive song which rings loud and clear even for someone with high-pitch hearing loss like me. I photographed this one in the scrub at the entrance road to Madera Canyon in Arizona.
Sparrows are tricky and the 8 species in the genus Peucaea are no exception. The Rufous-winged Sparrow can be confusing as the rufous in the wing is sometimes concealed. However, sometimes a sparrow will perch up on a prominent snag and allow you to study it. Then it belts out a distinctive song! This sparrow had all the field marks including the yellow conical bill, long tail and rusty crown. The Rufous-winged Sparrow is a bird of the American southwest is usually found in Arizona, New Mexico and into Mexico proper down to northern Sinaloa. This one was singing its heart out near Tucson, AZ.
This species can be found in montane forests on the western slope in Colombia and Ecuador. We had ours on the Camino Montezuma.
The Corn Bunting is a bird of open country in Europe, North Africa and some of Asia. It is mostly a year round resident in most of its range but some of the central European birds do move to more temperate locations when it is very cold. I saw huge flocks on my day trip to the Camargue when I was in the south of France on a work trip. However, most of them were far off in the fields.
This interesting and eye-popping bird is a furtive denizen of the undergrowth in disjunct populations from the west coast of Mexico all the way down to Venezuela and Colombia. It is the only member of its family and genus. My photo is obviously not great, so this will have to serve as a placeholder. Photo taken on my first trip to Colombia.
This little charmer was previously known as McCowan's Longspur but was one of the first birds whose name was changed to be less patronymic. Apparently McCowan was a confederate and his only contribution to science was shooting and collecting the first specimen. This species breeds in the Great Plains of the US and the Prairie provinces of Canada and then winters in the American southwest and Mexico. Luckily all the longspurs have a tendency to vagrant and I saw mine on the Outer Banks of my home state (NC).
