Clay-colored sparrow
species of bird
The clay-colored sparrow or clay-coloured sparrow (Spizella pallida) is a small New World sparrow of North America.
Adults have light brown upperparts and pale underparts, with darker streaks on the back. They have a pale crown stripe on a dark brown crown, a white line over the eyes, a dark line through the eyes, a light brown cheek patch and brown wings with wing bars. The short bill is pale with a dark tip and the back of the neck is grey; they have a long tail. Non-breeding adults and immature resemble chipping sparrows and Brewer's sparrows; they often form flocks with these birds outside the nesting season.
Their breeding habitat is shrubby open areas and jack pine woods across central Canada and central northern United States east to the Great Lakes, and is expanding further eastward. The nest is an open cup on the ground or low in a shrub.
These birds migrate in flocks to southern Texas and Mexico.
They forage on the ground, mainly eating seeds and insects. Outside the nesting season, they often feed in small flocks.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q551729. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clay-colored sparrow” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.