Top 30 Backyard Birds

Part I      Part II      Part III      Part IV      Part V      Part VI

This penultimate chapter includes five birds that fall under the rough designation of Ground-feeding Birds. While not an official category of evolutionary biology, this grouping has some practical implications for the backyard birdfeeder. While all of these birds readily enjoy seeds such as millet and sunflower, they range between uncomfortable and utterly incapable in their relationships with typical hanging tube feeders fitted with narrow perches. In nature, they search for seeds and insects on the ground, and they will often do the same underneath your feeders, acting as a natural clean-up crew that chases down each wayward seed that falls. If you would like to feed them more directly, attach a tray to the bottom of your tube feeder, or add a separate platform or tray type feeder that will allow these birds to feed comfortably.

21. White-crowned Sparrow

Identifying: Adults are easy, with their namesake black and white crowns. Immature birds require a little more attention, with relatively nondescript, brown and tan striped heads. Note their overall large sparrow size and shape which matches the adults, as well as their generally orangish bill color. The most common bird of similar size and habits is the Golden-crowned Sparrow—see below to avoid confusion.

Notes: White-crowned Sparrows are one of our most abundant and widespread yard birds from October until March. Our main winter population then heads to summer nesting sites in the Northwest, Canada, and Alaska, although we do have a solid year-round presence along the immediate coast and another subspecies you can visit on a summer trip to the Sierras. Like most of their sparrow brethren, they readily eat seeds including millet and sunflower, as well as suet (if they can reach it). While you will probably attract some sparrows by default as search for fallen seeds underneath your feeder, you can make your feeding station more sparrow-friendly by adding a tray to your tube feeders or by using a stand-alone or hang-alone tray feeder, that replaces narrow perches with a more comfortable, wide feeding platform.

22. Golden-crowned Sparrow

Identifying: Another bird with a helpful name! That often doesn’t happen! But it’s true, even if the golden crowns rather lose their luster in winter compared to the bright yellow they sport in summer (not spent here). Still, dull though it is, it is generally recognizably golden enough to identify them without trouble: if it has a golden crown, it’s a Golden-crown. You can also note that they have dull gray bills, in contrast with the orange bills of the White-crowns.

Notes: Golden-crowns are similarly abundant in winter, descending from their far northern breeding grounds to spend a good chunk of their year in our more hospitable latitudes. White-crowns and Golden-crowns make up the great mass of our winter sparrows seen around backyard feeders, but you can also see our Winter Sparrows page for tips on the two less common members of the club, the Fox Sparrow and the White-throated Sparrow. Golden-crowned Sparrows are our most notable singer of fall, performing their song of three clear, whistled, descending notes frequently after their arrival in September and October, occasionally through the winter, and then more frequently again before their departure around April.

23. Spotted Towhee

Identifying: You may remember our earlier coverage of the California Towhee in Chapter 1. The Spotted Towhee is their somewhat more glamorous cousin, but shares the same basic towhee shape (big sparrow with longish tail). Unlike the dull brown of the Cal Towhee, the Spotted Towhee is vividly colored with a dark head and back, red-brown (rufous) sides, and a white belly. Some beginners mistake them for juncos in their field guides—Spotted Towhees are distinctly bigger than sparrows, finches, et alios; have black wings flecked with white; and have dark bills. 

Local picture by Laura Milholland

Notes: Field guides of a certain age may refer to this bird as the Rufous-sided Towhee, a moniker it formerly shared with the similar Eastern Towhee from whom it has now been taxonomically ripped asunder. Spotted Towhees are less abundant in yards than California Towhees and not everyone will see them around their home: they require a fairly dense understory, where they can scratch noisily in the leaf litter with some illusions of privacy. If you don’t have them in your yard, you can easily visit them in a range of natural communities including chaparral, coastal scrub, brushy woodlands, riparian thickets and wherever those two requirements of dense brush and rich leaf litter are found.