White-eared ground sparrow
species of bird
The white-eared ground sparrow (Melozone leucotis) is a species of bird in the family Passerellidae, the New World sparrows. It is found in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
Taxonomy and systematics
The white-eared ground sparrow was formally described in 1861 with its present binomial Melozone leucotis.
The white-eared ground sparrow long was assigned three subspecies, the nominate M. l. leucotis (Cabanis, 1861), M. l. nigrior (Miller, W & Griscom, 1925), and M. l. occipitalis (Salvin, 1878). The last had originally been described as a species, and following two 2017 studies most taxonomic systems again recognized it as one, the grey-crowned ground sparrow, though some did not do so until 2025. However, in both 2018 and 2023 the American Ornithological Society declined to make the change, and as of 2025 AviList intends to revisit the issue.
This article follows the two-subspecies model.
“White-eared ground sparrow” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what White-eared, ground and sparrow can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 May 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3726404. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1861, 1925, 1878 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “White-eared ground 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.