Date: 11/26/25 2:13 pm
From: Julia H via Tweeters <tweeters...>
Subject: [Tweeters] Savannah sparrows in winter?
I was surprised to see an ebird checklist for a local (Seattle) park that
included savannah sparrow.

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:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Savannah_Sparrow/maps-range

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:
https://ebird.org/map/savspa?neg=true&<env.minX...>&<env.minY...>&<env.maxX...>&<env.maxY...>&zh=true&gp=false&ev=Z&excludeExX=false&excludeExAll=false&mr=12-2&bmo=12&emo=2&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2025

Should I be looking harder for this sparrow in winter? Or is that
aggregated data just likely a lot of rather mistaken birders?

Thanks,

Julia

_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
<Tweeters...>
http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters

 
Join us on Facebook!