A sparrow is often referred to as a "LBB" or little brown bird. Often inconspicuous, you may not even know that a sparrow is in your yard. But attracting Song Sparrows and other LBBs to your yard can be easy and will give you hours of good observations and improved identification skills.

Providing Habitat
Song Sparrows are found in a wide range of habitats, from rocky beaches and scrub desert to marshes and willow carrs. Adapting your yard to meet a Song Sparrow's needs is not so difficult. This LBB tends to prefer some cover near open grassy areas, so planting bushes or low trees or providing a brush pile may attract them to your yard.

Attracting Sparrows to Your Feeder
When temperatures drop to freezing and below, Song Sparrows become voracious eaters. Some records indicate that an individual can consume from 85 to 4000 seeds in one hour. You don't have to wait for cold weather to begin attracting Song Sparrows. Song Sparrows prefer a seed mix that includes millet and sunflower seeds, but they will be more attracted to seed on the ground than in a feeder. Be sure you don't have a cat outdoors that could prey on your little brown visitors!

Backyard Birding
Observing the birds in your backyard is fun year-round, and you can join birders all over the United States in the Great Backyard Bird Count in February each year. Check out the program at www.birdsource.org/gbbc.