For me sparrows are hard to identify, because they all pretty much look like little brown birds.
But if you look closely, the Chipping Sparrow has a distinctive bright rusty crown, black eyeline and unstreaked grayish belly.
I was lucky enough to come across a Chipping Sparrow nest on a hillside across the street from me this Summer.
The nest is made of woven grass and some hair. The pale blue-green eggs had markings of brown and purple; they took 10 to 12 days to hatch.
These birds favor areas with open lawns and seems to benefit from urban sprawl. They are very common in suburbs, city parks, orchards, pastures, other altered habitats.
Although they are highly migratory, very few spend the Winter in Ohio – these often appear at feeders. (Baby sparrows at 11 days after hatching.)
Chipping Sparrows migrate by night and their flight calls are a characteristic sound of the night sky in spring and fall in the United States. In the warmer months Chipping Sparrows mostly eat insects, including grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles and leafhoppers. In the colder months, they mostly eats seeds.
This bird gets its common name from males, which sing a long, dry trill of evenly spaced, almost mechanical-sounding “chips.” It’s one of the most common sounds of open woods in Spring . (Baby sparrows at 14 days after hatching.)