This migratory sparrow has both white-striped and tan-striped head patterns.
Some birds have white head stripes and others have tan stripes. Both patterns occur in males and females; they are not simply male and female plumages.
Researchers tagged White-throated Sparrows at three breeding populations in British Columbia and followed them with the Motus Wildlife Tracking System. They tagged 68 birds at those western breeding sites and another 31 at a wintering site in Georgia, for 99 birds in total. The study tested whether birds from distant breeding populations shared wintering areas or migration routes.
Of 23 birds tagged on western breeding grounds, 22 were detected in or moving toward the south-central United States; one migrated to California. Their shared wintering region and migration corridor overlap places where new song variants have spread. The authors suggest that shared routes could help explain how song forms move among distant breeding populations.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Most tagged White-throated Sparrows from British Columbia shared a wintering region in the south-central United States. Tracking breeding sites, migration routes, and wintering areas together can identify the regions that connect distant breeding populations.