How to Identify and Attract a Chipping Sparrow

Courtesy William Friggle

What Do Male and Female Chipping Sparrows Look Like?

You know you’re looking at a chipping sparrow by its chestnut cap and black eye line, though it does lose the cap and the eye line fades slightly in winter. Male and female chipping sparrows look alike.

Learn how to identify white-throated sparrows, Lincoln’s sparrows and white-crowned sparrows.

Courtesy Joan Edblom

Where to Find Chipping Sparrows

The chipping sparrow is among the most common sparrows in North America. They are summer visitors for most, reaching all the way up to Alaska. They winter or spend the whole year in southern states, from California, east to Florida and north to Maryland.

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Chipping Sparrow Nest

While the females build the nests, the males stand guard. Like many sparrows, they’re a bit picky about where they build; the female might start several nests before she settles on a single location. The female typically lays two to seven pale blue eggs and will raise one to three broods in a single season.

Learn how to identify a song sparrow.

What Do Chipping Sparrows Eat?

Don’t forget native sparrows at bird feeders. These are some of the most low-maintenance feeder birds, because they graze on whatever they can find on the ground. So keep those feeders full—the sparrows appreciate anything that falls down.

Backyard Tip: Plant grasses if you want to support these sparrows. Native and ornamental grasses offer plenty of seed for this ground feeding bird.

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Look-Alike Winter Sparrow

Courtesy Janet Zimmerman

If you think you’ve seen a chipping sparrow in winter, you might want to take a second look. You may be seeing an American tree sparrow—a winter visitor throughout the central and northern U.S. The tree sparrow also has a rufous cap, but it summers in northern Canada and Alaska.

These two sparrow species take turns as popular backyard birds in the northern United States. Chipping sparrows live there in summer, migrating to the southern states in fall. American tree sparrows spend summers in the Arctic, appearing south of Canada only from late fall to early spring. The tree sparrow is slightly larger, with more obvious white wing bars. The stripe behind its eye is reddish brown, not black or dark gray as on the chipping sparrow. Pay attention to the different bill colors as well: They are bicolored black and yellow on tree sparrows, while chipping sparrows’ bills are black in summer and partly dull pink in winter.

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