Paul... tree sparrow is reasonable in your area. Does it have a "clear" grayish breast? Check the top of the head... does it have the rufous cap? And check the bill if you can see it with bins... is it bicolored????

Your second bird could def. be a song sparrow, though the ones I've always been assoc. with in Ohio, PA, and here haven't been typical ground scratchers, doing the "towhee shuffle".... sure it isn't white-throated sparrow in the tan morph (I assume you have a field guide to check your visuals with)

No, siskins won't act like ground feeding sparrows... they are basically niger eaters at socks or finch seed (niger) feeders. They will eat on the ground if need be in your yard but aren't scratchers (believe me, we feed 125-150 of them most winters :^0)))))

You have a good eye and are very thorough on your descriptions... with a good field guide and your observations, you'll be able to get good ID's on all these birds before long. You already have a good start on this being able to know they are either sparrows or something close in appearance with the stripey appearance (like the siskins... which you'll know when you see them as they are ALL stripey, small, and have gorgeous flashes of yellow in the wings when they vie for spaces on the feeders!)

Good birding...

Connie,

I have been trying to get a good look a the "tree" sparrows. So far, I have not been able to get a good lock on whether it has a bicolor beak. But it does have a clear breast that's somewhat creamier color as it's near the bottom and becomes slightly grayer as it approaches the head. There is a distinctive spot on the breast. They seemed to show up in a flock of 4-5. Recently, I notice that they like to hang around the finch feeder and eat the nyjer seed, but are definitely not finches.

I didn't think the "song" sparrow was a white throated bird because it has no yellow spot on its head.

It's so tough to tell sparrows apart :-)

Paul

The house sparrow not only has a distinctive un-sparrow like beak, look at the patterns on their back. They are so unlike most sparrow markings, it makes them easy to spot without a good look.

Our first tree sparrows are showing up in S.E. Ohio this week. The dark thumbprint on a clear breast is the first landmark I look for.

Yes, I was watching a song sparrow do a toehee shuffle under a feeder this morning. A song sparrow would be the most typical sparrow with this description. When you see a typical one, they're an easy identification, but the problem with them is that there is such a wild variance in their patterns. I had a verified Savannah sparrow sighting last winter. It's very unusual to see them in my area in winter. I didn't want to believe it was one, but it just didn't fit the landmarks of a song sparrow when you go through them one by one. I would mark it as a song sparrow, then erase the log, just not satified it was. So, I ran it by an ornithologist and he verified it was a Savannah.

Like Connie said, you seem to have a good eye, and good descriptive skills. I actually like doing the counts and sparrow identification. I have had a couple of rare bird successes with sparrows on my bird counts when in previous years I'd have just assumed they were a more common species. It's challenging.

I live in N.E.Ohio and I grew up on a dairy farm where we simply classified sparrows as house sparrow, field sparrow, or song sparrow, all of which we considered a minor nuisance because they constantly got into our grain bins.

Since I retired last June I have taken up nature photography as a retirement hobby, and here again, those darn nuisance sparrows keep popping into the shot when I trying to get a picture of the more popular birds. But once I had the pictures I began to notice a lot more variations so out of curiosity I got a field guide,

Birds of Ohio
by McCormac & Kennedy
Published by Lone Pine Press.

The book lists 23 species of sparrows that are native to Ohio, and although I always thought a house sparrow was a native species I discovered that it is technically defined as an "Old World Sparrow", which is not native but rather it was introduced into North America from Europe.

With a little bit more research I discovered that there are 63 species of sparrows that are native to North America & Canada and another 37 species of Old World Sparrows and 43 of the 63 native species and nearly all of the Old world sparrows frequent the Great Lakes Region.

Needless to say, I am now looking at sparrows in a new light, and i have spent many hours photographing the lowly sparrow. To date I have documented 19 species in my yard, all confirmed by an Ornithologist from Ohio state University Extension Service.