[Tweeters] Savannah sparrows in winter?

[Dennis Paulson via Tweeters]

Julia, small numbers of Savannah Sparrows winter widely in western Washington (like the alliteration?), all the way north into southwestern BC. I would expect them only in wide-open grassy areas, but if those are present, there could be Savannahs there.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle


> On Nov 26, 2025, at 2:02 PM, Julia H via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu> wrote:

> 

> I was surprised to see an ebird checklist for a local (Seattle) park that included savannah sparrow.

> 

> In my experience I never see savannah sparrows in Seattle in winter, which would seem to make sense based on their feeding patterns (I'm not sure how they'd survive winter!), and this range map from Cornell seems to agree: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Savannah_Sparrow/maps-range <https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Savannah_Sparrow/maps-range>

> 

> But when I look at the range map for savannah sparrow based on ebird-reported observations, one gets the impression that there's quite a lot of savannah sparrows in western Washington in winter: https://ebird.org/map/savspa?neg=true&env.minX=-168.66954078670645&env.minY=25.321713084349895&env.maxX=-67.77110328670646&env.maxY=66.86001568245365&zh=true&gp=false&ev=Z&excludeExX=false&excludeExAll=false&mr=12-2&bmo=12&emo=2&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2025 <https://ebird.org/map/savspa?neg=true&env.minX=-168.66954078670645&env.minY=25.321713084349895&env.maxX=-67.77110328670646&env.maxY=66.86001568245365&zh=true&gp=false&ev=Z&excludeExX=false&excludeExAll=false&mr=12-2&bmo=12&emo=2&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2025>

> 

> Should I be looking harder for this sparrow in winter?  Or is that aggregated data just likely a lot of rather mistaken birders?

> 

> Thanks,

> 

> Julia

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