Spizelloides arborea
Order Passeriformes
Family Passerellidae
Adult.— Crown reddish-brown; back brownish, streaked with black; wing-bars white; under parts pale gray; a dusky spot in the centre of the breast; sides tinged with reddish-brown.
The Tree Sparrow is a common winter visitant in New York and New England, appearing in October and leaving in April. It is even more numerous as a migrant than in winter. Tree Sparrows frequent sheltered spots where food and cover can be found; the edges of marshes, old fields grown up to weeds, and dry hillsides covered with ragweed (Ambrosia) are favorite resorts.
A single bird is rare, and flocks sometimes number a hundred. They scatter over the feeding-ground, reaching up for the seeds, jumping for them, or even lighting on the taller plants, and bending them down with their weight. A snow-fall enables them to reap a harvest from still taller plants, and their tracks now form a network from one stalk to the other.
While feeding, the flock keep up a cheerful twitter, each bird repeating the syllables teel-wit in a sweet, lively tone. When startled the Tree Sparrow utters a slight tsip. This note is also used as a call-note, and may be heard on dark winter afternoons as the birds fly into weedy thickets to spend the night. The song, uttered in March and April, and occasionally in the autumn, is sweet and rather loud, beginning with four long-drawn notes, whee-hee-ho-hee (Langille). The form of the opening is like that of the Fox Sparrow, but the notes are not so rich and powerful.
In winter the Tree Sparrow may easily be distinguished from any other wintering sparrow by its unstreaked breast, chestnut crown, and white wing-bars. In October and April it often associates with Chipping Sparrows and Field Sparrows, and from these two species it may be distinguished by its greater size and the whiter wing-bars, but chiefly by a dusky spot in the centre of the breast.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)