Saltmarsh Sparrow

About the Saltmarsh Sparrow

The saltmarsh sparrow (Ammospiza caudacuta) is a small New World sparrow found in salt marshes along the Atlantic coast of the United States. At one time, this bird and the Nelson's sparrow (Ammospiza nelsoni) were thought to be a single species, the sharp-tailed sparrow. Because of this, the species was briefly known as the "saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrow." Saltmarsh sparrow numbers are declining due to habitat loss largely attributed to human activity.

The saltmarsh sparrow was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the orioles in the genus Oriolus and coined the binomial name Oriolus caudacutus. He gave the locality as New York. Gmelin based his own description on those for the "sharp-tailed oriole" that had been described by John Latham in 1782 and by Thomas Pennant in 1785. The saltmarsh sparrow is now one of four American sparrows placed in the genus Ammospiza that was introduced by Harry C. Oberholser in 1905. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek αμμος (ammos) meaning "sand" and σπιζα (spiza) meaning "finch". The specific epithet caudacuta... Wikipedia →