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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Dear Julia,</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">This is an interesting question. I always consider it a banner day, when I find a Savannah Sparrow in winter. Your question led me to check on this.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Here is what my own birding data reveals. In Skagit County, I have seen the Savannah Sparrow 66 times during the months of December, January, and February. Over that same span of time, I saw the Song Sparrow 3058 times. It appears that one's chances of finding a Savannah Sparrow in winter, at least in Skagit County, where I've done most of my Washington State birding, would be around one-fiftieth that of finding a Song Sparrow!</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">On reflection, I'd say that the chances are probably even slimmer than that. Quite a few of those 66 Savannah Sparrow sightings were the result of my following up on a sighting that someone else had reported, often in a place where I probably would not have gone birding, had I not been trying to find my first Savannah of the year, or my last.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"> Yours truly,</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Gary Bletsch</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div>
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On Wednesday, November 26, 2025 at 05:03:53 PM EST, Julia H via Tweeters <tweeters@u.washington.edu> wrote:
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<div><div id="ydp8587c523yiv4112251981"><div dir="ltr">I was surprised to see an ebird checklist for a local (Seattle) park that included savannah sparrow.<div><br></div><div>In my experience I never see savannah sparrows in Seattle in winter, which would seem to make sense based on their feeding patterns (I'm not sure how they'd survive winter!), and this range map from Cornell seems to agree: <a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Savannah_Sparrow/maps-range" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Savannah_Sparrow/maps-range</a></div><div><br></div><div>But when I look at the range map for savannah sparrow based on ebird-reported observations, one gets the impression that there's quite a lot of savannah sparrows in western Washington in winter: <a href="https://ebird.org/map/savspa?neg=true&env.minX=-168.66954078670645&env.minY=25.321713084349895&env.maxX=-67.77110328670646&env.maxY=66.86001568245365&zh=true&gp=false&ev=Z&excludeExX=false&excludeExAll=false&mr=12-2&bmo=12&emo=2&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2025" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://ebird.org/map/savspa?neg=true&env.minX=-168.66954078670645&env.minY=25.321713084349895&env.maxX=-67.77110328670646&env.maxY=66.86001568245365&zh=true&gp=false&ev=Z&excludeExX=false&excludeExAll=false&mr=12-2&bmo=12&emo=2&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2025</a></div><div><br></div><div>Should I be looking harder for this sparrow in winter? Or is that aggregated data just likely a lot of rather mistaken birders?</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div><br></div><div>Julia</div></div>
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