The Invisible Sparrow

The Invisible Sparrow

Eastern race of Grasshopper Sparrow by Louis Agassiz Fuertes . Plate 81 from Birds of America (Garden City, New York, 1917, 1936). 

Another bird that the North Okanagan used to be well known for is the Grasshopper Sparrow. In 1983 Jim Grant, well known Vernon naturalist, showed me my first Grasshopper Sparrow in the grasslands along Goose Lake Road which connected Old Kamloops Road and the south end of Goose Lake. This site had contained as many as six pairs in 1963 and was well known the THE spot in the province to find this species. Early one late June morning we watched as a tiny sparrow energetically sang its thinly musical song from a tussock of grass east of the summit of Goose Lake Road. This became my go-to spot for the Grasshopper Sparrow from 1989 when my family and I moved to Vernon.

In the 1990s a few large houses were built on the west side of Goose Lake Road eliminating the sparse grass habitat favoured by the sparrows and the road was paved. Thereafter I was unable to find any Grasshopper Sparrows on the west side and the population on the east side dwindled to one singing male, and eventually from 2007 onwards to none.

Meanwhile during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s a few more Grasshopper Sparrows turned up – all of them singing males in June or July, never more than two a year. One was on the grassy slopes of Middleton Mountain in a spot now covered by big houses, and another sang in a weedy former horse pasture opposite Desert Cove Estates along Head-of-the-Lake Road.

Both of these locations were good for only a year. At this time I do not know of any spot for this species in the North Okanagan where the public can go. However, if you don’t mind going to the South Okanagan you might find a Grasshopper Sparrow in the grasslands near the parking lot of  Ecological Reserve 100 at the end of Meadowlark Lane off Black Sage Road east of Road 22, or one in the grasslands along the paved road that leads from Highway 3 to the Chopaka border crossing from mid to late May into August. Good luck. Unless the male is singing, the Grasshopper Sparrow is as hard to find as a grassland mouse. As Peter Dunne points out, the birds don't respond to pishing either. 

The Grasshopper Sparrow still occurs in the North Okanagan, but not anywhere that’s open to the public. I have found a tiny handful of individuals on the Indian Reserve and on the Department of Defense lands while running surveys for the land owners, but it would be the unwise birder indeed who dares to trespass on either of those large chunks of land.

Nine things you may not know about the Grasshopper Sparrow:

1.Currently the species Ammodramus savannarum is divided into twelve subspecies. The widespread ones are A.s. perpallidus in western North America and A.s. pratensis east of the Great Plains. One non-migratory population, A.S. floridanus, the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, is in deep trouble. Despite habitat management in its very limited range north and west of Lake Kissimmee, the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow has been called the most endangered bird in the continental United States. Birds are known from only five breeding sites, and in 2012 steep population declines continued.

2. “Our” Grasshopper Sparrow, A.s. perpallidus, is considered endangered in British Columbia. The only areas where breeding evidence has been found are the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys.

3. The Grasshopper Sparrow belongs to a group of equally reclusive and secretive relatives, Henslow’s Sparrow, Le Conte’s Sparrow, Nelson’s Sparrow, Saltmarsh Sparrow, Seaside Sparrow, Baird’s Sparrow, and two South Americans, the Grassland Sparrow and the Yellow-browed Sparrow.

4. Ammodramus savannarum means sandrunner of the meadows. According to The Handbook of Birds of the World (Vol. 16) the German name for the species is a throat-clearing “Heuschreckenammer”.

5. The female Grasshopper Sparrow builds a grass nest on the ground, often hidden beneath a dome of grasses.

6. According to The Birds of Oregon, in that state east of the Cascades the Grasshopper Sparrow inhabits native bunchgrass remnants on north-facing slopes.

7. The males require elevated perches in their breeding habitats from which they sing their two types of song. Like most Ammodramus species, the Grasshopper Sparrow appears to put a huge effort into delivering its song.

8. It tolerates some shrubs in its habitats but favours the grasses and bare patches between the shrubs. The more the shrubs, the less chance that the sparrow will find the habitat suitable.

9. A fossil bird very similar to the Grasshopper Sparrow was found and dated to be from 10 million years ago. Two major differences were that the dinobird was eleven metres tall and sported a beak almost a metre in length, capable of crushing coconuts. Sorry, I made that up. The fossil was of a very small sparrow, A. hatcheri,  from the late Miocene.

I find magic and wonder in the Grasshopper Sparrow. Imagine this atom of a bird speeding unheaded through the darkness over the Great Basin, oriented we know not how towards Mexico where it will find just the right patch of grasses in which to winter, surviving predation, disease, exposure, and hunger, and towards mid spring with the stars shining in its eyes, it grows restless and in an instant takes flight once again toward the north and a very unsure future.