Savannah Sparrow Tekciuk/Macarcugaq

by Frank Keim

You can’t miss this sparrow. With a brown-streaked chest, often with a dark brown spot in the middle, the male sings with a rapid insect-like buzz in open tundra or sedge and grassland atop short willow shrubs. The male also has a distinctive bright yellow eyebrow in the spring. The female has a similar color pattern but without the brilliant yellow eyebrow.

The bird’s Yup’ik names are Tekciuk, Tekciugaq, Tekcilunaq and a few other similar variations, all of which are imitative of the bird’s distinctive call. I’ve been told that Macarcugaq is another of its names, which translates something like “bird who likes the sun to shine,” and from my experience aptly describes the species, since every time I’ve seen it singing it was doing so in the full sunlight.

Savannah sparrows return to their breeding ground in the Y-K Delta in early April, and immediately get down to the serious business of finding nesting territories and mates. The male perches conspicuously on the upper limbs of willow shrubs or small trees, and with his high-pitched buzz sings to advise other males to stay away and for any interested females to check him out. If another male ventures near, he is quickly warned to leave by the owner who flutters up with his tail cocked and legs dangling while beating his wings slowly and hovering in the air. He may also raise his wings vertically behind his back. If these signals don’t work to get rid of the intruder, the owner will physically chase him away.

The male will also engage in a similar flutter-flight display to try to attract females during courtship. Although in southern climes the male may have more than one mate, in the Y-K Delta he and his spouse are monogamous and usually remain faithful to each other during the breeding season. This is probably because the male’s help is needed at the nest for raising young during the short northern breeding period.

During the nesting season, both sexes eat insects and spiders, stalking them through the grass, on the tundra, or along beaches. They usually walk or fly after their prey, but occasionally will hop or run after them. Although they also eat seeds from the previous year’s plants, insects and other arthropods offer more nutritional value to allow them to produce healthy young.

The female selects the nest site and builds the nest on the ground usually within three days amid a thick thatch of dry grasses, sedges and other vegetation in order to conceal it from predators. It is in the shape of a small cup about 2 inches across and 1 inch deep, and is composed of coarse grasses on the outside with finely woven softer materials such as mosses, fine grasses and downy feathers on the inside. The nest is usually placed under matted dead plants or under overhanging grass so it can only be approached by a “tunnel” from one side.

    She lays 2-6 pale green or bluish eggs with brown speckles, which she alone incubates for 12-13 days. The nestlings are born naked, are altricial and must remain in the nest for 8-13 days before they are strong enough to take their virgin flight. During the days the mother bird feeds the young in the nest, she gathers more than 10 times her weight in food to feed both herself and her young. If you count the amount of food the male contributes, that’s a lot of work for both adults in just over a week.

Each year Savannah sparrows tend to return to the same nesting area where they hatched. This “natal philopatry,” as it’s called, is especially true in coastal areas of their range.

Savannah sparrows have lost winter habitat due to urban sprawl in the Lower 48 states, and they are also susceptible to pesticides, especially granular pesticides, in their wintering areas. As a result, their populations declined by about 45% between 1966 and 2019, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. In their breeding habitat in the north, rapid changes due to global heating will undoubtedly result in further declines in their population.

The bird’s scientific name, Passerculus sandwichensis, is Latin meaning, “little sparrow from the Sandwich Sound” (now Prince William Sound) in southern Alaska from where the first specimen was collected. Its common name refers to Savannah, Georgia, where Alexander Wilson, the so-called “Father of American Ornithology,” first observed the species in 1811.