Ammodramus savannarum
Order Passeriformes
Family Passerellidae
Adult.— Upper parts streaked with black, rich chestnut, and gray; line through the crown buff; under parts buffy, unstreaked.
Immature.— Breast spotted with blackish.
Nest, on the ground.
Eggs, white, spotted with reddish-brown.
The Grasshopper Sparrow is a common summer resident of southern New England and the lower Hudson Valley, but is rare in most of Massachusetts; in New Hampshire, it is found only here and there in or near the valleys of the Connecticut and the Merrimac, and in Maine it does not occur. It is common in certain sections of Massachusetts, as on the dry, sterile fields of Nantucket, or the extensive plains in the Connecticut and Sudbury valleys, where the ground is sandy and the grass not too luxuriant. The bird arrives late in April or early in May, and remains till September.
It utters its insect-like song from some tall weed or low post, and sometimes from the very ground. The song is so shrill that it takes a sharp ear to catch it. It is almost exactly like the stridulation of the green grasshopper, common in low grass-land (Orchelimum vulgare), tsick, tsick, tsurrrrrrr. The call-note consists of two notes, tillic, almost run together into one. The flight of the male from his singing perch is curiously feeble and fluttering.
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.
From other grass-loving sparrows, the buffy unstreaked under parts should distinguish it.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)