Plate 130 – Yellow-winged Sparrow

John James Audubon noted seeing and hearing the Yellow-winged Sparrow along the Texas coast in the spring of 1837 as he did just about everywhere else he watched for and listened for birds: “The appearance of this humble species on the shores of the Columbia river renders its geographical distribution as difficult of comprehension as that of some other species, which, like it, discard as it were extensive tracts and appear in distant regions for a season.” The Yellow-winged Sparrow is now commonly known as the Grasshopper sparrow in reference to the preference the bird has for catching and consuming grasshoppers. It could be argued that the Grasshopper also sings like a grasshopper stridulates. The ” tip ” call that the bird also uses to communicate with each other is almost undetectable. Outside of all the other challenges that humankind poses, Grasshopper sparrows simply cannot hear one another over modern day commotion. While Audubon could hear “considerable numbers” of Grasshopper sparrows during spring and summer from Maryland to Maine, records currently show that there are no longer considerable numbers of Grasshopper sparrows anywhere in North America. In some places, such as Florida, the bird is endangered.