jiggreen,
To familiarize yourself with HOSPs (McSparrows) go to a fastfood place & just watch them until you can ID them immediately in all plumages. If you have a good field guide read the beginning & the section on sparrows. There are usually tips there. My Kaufman guide agrees they can be hard to identify but offers:
Pattern of the underparts-Is it streaked across the chest or down the sides, does it have a dark chest spot or is it plain below?
Head Pattern-look for things like stripes on the crown, an eye ring etc.
You get the idea. Every field guide usies the little arrows or pointer to show you the "field marks" which are what help us tell one similar bird from another. I hope this doesn't sound too preachy but I know when I first started I just tried to match the birds with the pics-read the text of your guides & it will really help.
Also if you are mostly interested in feeder birds that will narrow it down considerably. White Throats & White Crowns, Chipping & maybe Fox sparrows are all I usually get. The males of those are pretty easy but the females will take time-don't get discouraged! Soon you'll know at a glance & be teaching newer newbies!Probably more than ever wanted to know!
Susan

Hi jiggreen,

I too am new at watching birds but have trouble id'ing any sparrows BUT house sparrows! We live just outside a city (Boston) where there are loads of sparrows. I know that house sparrows are dreaded by everyone on this forum, and these birds are nasty to other birds and each other; the best we can do here is make our property unwelcoming for them. I put out quality food, and the seed feeder has a pretty effective "sparrow scarer" on it, but they take over sometimes anyway, so I periodically take down the seed feeder, wait till things are quiet, and put it up again.

I get frustrated too about id'ing birds, but I think the best we can do is review our field guide and keep that and our binoculars handy so that when a new bird appears, we can see everything about it and check it against the book. I keep my stuff on a shelf in the dining room, so I can look out that window. Whatever works for you.

Also* - If you have a camera with which you can take pictures of the bird(s) you're having trouble with, and you can get a photo of it onto this forum, people are always glad to offer their thoughts on what type of bird it is.

Your fellow newbie,

Donna

Thanks for the responses!! (I like that McDonald's idea!)

I don't know why I am so confused..I have looked and looked at pictures of house sparrows, but for some reason I am having a difficult time! I have taken some pictures of assorted birds that I'm having trouble with and will post them....I know you all will have no problem id'ing!

Your alternating stripe ones appear to be juvenile White -crowned Sparrows to me

That's why a lot of people call them LBJs. Little brown jobs. Unless you are a keen bird watcher they all look alike. Well most of them

When I started to get serious about birding, I forced myself to work on the sparrow group. I had a rare sighting last winter by identifying a Savannah. Several years ago, I put a pic of a sparrow I thought was a chippy out of season and on this forum and got talked down, but an ornithologist from Cornell, confirmed it was indeed a chipper and I got credit for another rare bird sighting.

Sparrows are hard, especially when you encounter ones out of your typical range. The easiest way to tell a house sparrow from a real sparrow is to look at their beaks. House sparrows have a more finch-like beak, more conical. You can immediately cut to the chase when you have ruled them out this way.

I still don't consider myself anything of a sparrow authority. I still struggle with them on occasion, especially because the feathering can have such a range between males/females/juvies. But try to learn certain landmarks common to all sparrows, and if it helps make a list to rule them out. Things like the colour of the legs, whether they have clear or spotted breast, whether the tail is notched. Presence of eye rings. Tail length, overall size. I find that really narrows down the possibilities and make your choices easier. Last year, I worked on call/song identification. It's been a big help.

If you want to get serious about sparrows, get the Peterson's guide 'Advanced Birding' by Kenn Kaufmann. There's a section on sparrows which is excellent. I was lucky enough to participate in a class he taught for Tucson Audubon some years back, based on the techniques outlined in the field guide. Good stuff, not just little arrows pointing at 'field marks'.

-O-

It took me a while to figure out the different sparrows too. I know for some the beak shape is an easy identifier, though it wasn't for me. What helped me was looking for the light colored line behind the eye on the female. To me, the female house finch and the female house sparrow looked a lot alike until I looked for that eye line. In comparing the other sparrows that looked similar to me, I noticed that they have dark lines behind their eye, or light colored lines above their eye, not directly behind it. Hope this helps.

Yes, guides with arrows pointing to field marks aren't the ultimate in identification. Guides with notes about other birds with similar characteristics and then explanations about what to look for the tell the two apart are helpful.

I have found that in most cases where IDs are difficult it's really beneficial to research more than one resource.

We really have some tools now that weren't commonly available even fifteen years ago and that's access to the internet and cheaper digital cameras. I keep a digital right by the regular birding window. I take rapid frames of the birds in question from as many angles as I can. Sometimes you don't have time to focus and be fussy. Getting a less than perfect picture is not always a failure. If it helps you to catch the target sitting next to a known bird, immediately you have a handle on size.

I also prefer real photographs I find on this forum, because painted representations just leave too much to artistic license. LOL.

I sometimes wonder how many really cool sparrows I missed by logging them as something common? So many folks just causally dismiss them because they look similar. This is where you sometimes find your lifers!

Keep a notepad handy to your observation station to mark down anything you notice on field marks. I have a good memory but the image in the brain can play tricks on you quickly. Draw a pic if you must, and try to catch some photos. Document, document and document.

Reading all the followups to this post has been so helpful, a lot of concrete, commonsense ideas (the digital camera nearby, thanks Calliope!)

Along the lines of id'ing birds - which bird references are the best for that? I know there are Audubon and Petersons - and Stokes has been mentioned - are these the best, or are there others that are better? The idea that two references are better than one seems like a good one.

I've only been bird-watching a few years, and have found sparrows to be particularly confounding. The male House Sparrow was the only sparrow I was able to ID upon first sight. I can be looking right at a Sparrow about 10 or 15 feet out the window and then study the pictures in the bird guide and still not be sure which one it is.

Usually I take a photo and get it ID'd here. After someone IDs it, then for some reason it makes total sense and it's easy to recognize in subsequent sightings.

My favourite guide in the field is National Geographic birds of North America, but I have a couple of shelves of field guides in my library. The ones with photos of birds rather than paintings I find fairly useless in the field but helpful for research. The Peterson's Advanced Guide I mentioned before is excellent, dealing with groups of birds which can be daunting (sparrows, empidonax flycatchers etc).

-O-

I'm so glad to know that I'm not alone in my confusion and frustration!!! I ordered a new camera in order to take better pics for id purposes, and am anxiously waiting for it to arrive. I hope it arrives today!! (it better, since I paid 50 bucks extra for next day air shipping and it shipped out on thursday!! the next day should have been friday!!) Once the camera arrives (and I figure out how to use it, lol!) I'll probably be posting lots and lots of pictures asking for id help!

Jiggreen - how exciting that you're getting a new camera. I bought a new one about a month ago - a point and shoot with a good zoom and image stabalization, for taking better pictures of birds. BUT - I think you should get a refund on the shipping for your camera. Waiting 3 days for a shipment does not equal next day!