Saving a half-hidden treasure: Get to know the saltmarsh sparrow
Often tucked away in the dense grasses and vegetation of places seen from afar, and — sadly — dwindling in its numbers, the saltmarsh sparrow might be unfamiliar to many.
If you live along the Atlantic or Florida Gulf coast, though, this remarkable bird is your neighbor — or, rather, your neighbird.
And your neighbird needs a helping hand.
Tides and storm events are increasingly flooding the high marsh habitat in which the saltmarsh sparrow nests, and when rising seas flood the sparrows’ nests, eggs may float away or chicks may drown. Saltmarsh sparrows are also vulnerable to predators, including snakes, other birds, and mammals such as racoons and mink.
Much work is being done. Federal and state agencies, tribes, non-governmental organizations, industry, private landowners, and researchers are working together to try to save the saltmarsh sparrow. At the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, this includes investments in research and conservation and extensive collaboration with partners on innovative techniques to restore tidal flow and increase marsh elevation and provide sparrow habitat on our wildlife refuges and beyond.
If we all don’t continue to act, the saltmarsh sparrow could face extinction.
With so much at stake, the Service and our partners mined research, photos and videos to show the life of saltmarsh sparrows in ways that few get to see. Here are some of the highlights.
If, at first, you don’t succeed…
Try, try, again! For saltmarsh sparrows, perseverance is a matter of species survival.
Due to sea-level rise and storm surge, saltmarsh sparrows are facing extreme nest flooding from Maine to Virginia. With a well-built nest and good timing, it’s possible for the eggs to float and settle back into the nest cup for mom to re-warm them, like they do in this night-vision video.
But not all nests are so lucky. Meet female 27160, a neighbird, who nested for several years in the Scarborough Marsh in Maine. It took her three attempts over two years before she finally fledged a single chick.
Put a ring on it
What can we learn from a small metal bracelet?
Meet GRXO, the neighbird that holds the record for the furthest migration in saltmarsh sparrows. In 2016, this color-banded bird mysteriously appeared in Warren, Rhode Island in the Jacob’s Point salt marshes, which are owned and managed by the Warren Land Conservation Trust.
She nested there, and biologists were able to temporarily capture her to read her full band number. They looked up her U.S. Geological Survey banding records, and it turned out she had traveled a whopping 1,170 miles from her wintering grounds in Pinellas County, Florida, where she was first banded in 2015!
Her “recapture” story inspired biologists in Rhode Island to form the Saltmarsh Sparrow Research Initiative, a five-year monitoring program in its last year in 2021.
While saltmarsh sparrows nest in coastal marshes from Maine to Virginia, they overwinter from Massachusetts to Florida, making them a true mascot of the Atlantic coastline.
Goldilocks
Not too tall, but not too short — a saltmarsh sparrow nest must be built just right.
If it’s too high above the surrounding marsh grasses, predators can find the nest. If it’s too low, rising high tides will flood it.
Meet the chicks of nest ER18SALS103, which was built just right in Connecticut on marshland owned and managed by the Madison Land Conservation Trust.
At 7 days old, the chicks were measured by researchers from Saltmarsh Habitat & Avian Research Program. Three days later, the nest flooded during high tide, shown in the video here.
Even though the surrounding area was mostly covered with dense swatches of a thin marsh grass, the female had chosen to build a dome over the top of her nest using a thicker, stronger grass species. Due to her discerning eye, excellent craftsmanship, and good timing, the chicks were able to climb the dome and escape the rising tide! They successfully fledged soon after.
If you’ve seen one, you seen….
All salt marshes look the same — or do they?
What we may see as a flat flooded prairie, saltmarsh sparrows see as an intricate tapestry with sloping hills and valleys, winding waterways, and a plethora of plant species to choose from. In that lush green neighborhood, female sparrows carefully decide not only where to build their nests, but what materials and blueprints to use.
Service staff and researchers at Saltmarsh Habitat & Avian Research Program have been monitoring nests for nearly a decade to try to determine why certain ones fail, while others succeed.
It turns out, what works for the sparrows of one marsh doesn’t always work for the sparrows of another! Successful nests can be made of a variety of plants, constructed in different ways, and placed in different marsh microhabitats. Researchers have found successful nests built not only in Spartina patens (salt hay), but also other marsh species like Spartina alterniflora (cordgrass) and Juncus gerardii (blackgrass).
Salt marshes might all look the same to the untrained eye, but the sparrows — and, now, scientists — see them differently.
Mealtime!
Leafhoppers, crickets, and spiders, oh my!
During the breeding season, female saltmarsh sparrows feed their nestlings insects, spiders, amphipods, and occasionally tiny fish or mollusks. Unlike many other songbird species, saltmarsh sparrows don’t form breeding pairs. The female builds the nest, incubates the eggs, and feeds the chicks all on her own. Here is mom, ready to deliver a mouthful!
Now, you see them; now, you don’t
Saltmarsh sparrows are secretive — so much so that many coastal communities aren’t even aware of the birds next door.
Dense marsh grasses provide a perfect hiding place for a bird more inclined to run than fly. Here a saltmarsh sparrow female runs up to the nest, feeds her chicks, removes a fecal sac, and scampers away.
What is a fecal sac, you ask? A fecal sac is a diaper-like package that contains young chicks’ feces and helps keep the nest clean and tidy. The parents will remove the sac and carry it away from the nest, or even eat it! For our saltmarsh sparrow, females are the sole caregivers and every extra calorie for mom helps.
No place like home
Saltmarsh sparrows rely on their namesake salt marshes, and those marshes need our help.
For centuries, saltmarsh sparrows have timed their nesting with tidal cycles in a delicate dance to raise chicks between high tides. Due to sea-level rise, increased storm surge, and coastal infrastructure, saltmarsh sparrow nests and the surrounding marshes are flooding, and, like the sparrow, some marshes are drowning.
To help the sparrow, the marshes, and the coastal communities that rely on them for storm protection, and our and partners are working to restore tidal marshes using innovative techniques.
One technique, called runneling, involves digging a shallow channel to help drain standing water off the marsh to allow plants to thrive. Peat that is dug out is used to make mounds of sediment, which over time recolonize with plants and give the sparrows higher real estate in which to nest.
These sparrow high rises at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge Complex are covered in grasses favored by the sparrow.
Hope is the thing with feathers
In July 2019, a saltmarsh sparrow nest with five eggs at Jacob’s Point in Rhode Island flooded with a high tide. Three eggs floated up and out of the nest, and there was little hope for the remaining two.
Still, Deirdre Robinson of the Saltmarsh Sparrow Research Initiative kept monitoring the nest, and was astonished to see a single bright pink chick several days later. The chick was banded with an aluminum band with unique numbers and also with two color-bands — purple and orange.
To Robinson’s despair, several days later the chick was seen shivering outside of the nest.
She returned and searched for the chick on the final nest check, and it was nowhere to be seen. Then, suddenly, a female flew in with a larva in her bill. Robinson gave the family space, and behold: The nine-day old chick was fully feathered and doing well!
The day was the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo 11 launch to the moon, and so this chick earned the name “Apollo.”
Fast forward to February 2021, and Apollo was recaptured on her wintering grounds in North Carolina, nearly 700 miles from where she hatched!
What is Apollo up to now? Saltmarsh sparrows typically return to the same place to nest every year. Good luck, Apollo!
Worth the effort
Some neighbors are easier to get to know than others, and getting to know the tiny, reclusive saltmarsh sparrow can be a challenge.
It’s a challenge we think it well worth the effort, though and we hope you feel the same way.
The work of trying to halt the saltmarsh sparrow’s decline and restore its population is complicated and urgent, but with collaboration and commitment, the Service and many great partners are working hard on solutions in hopes that we’ll be able to check in on these neighbirds for decades to come.
If you want to learn more, you’ll find great resources at fws.gov and at the site of the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture, acjv.org.
