Possible Nelson's Sparrow?

[Betty Widerski]

I just got a Birdweather PUC (station # PUC-25338 if anyone else has one) and have been testing it in my E. Arlington yard. Aside from the hundreds of House Sparrow IDs (!) this morning it claims to have ID'd a Nelson's Sparrow with 95% confidence. I'm taking its IDs with a large grain of salt, but I downloaded this one, looked at the spectrogram, and compared it to East Coastal Nelson's Sparrows in Macauley. It's not *quite* but very close. Looking for other opinions, as eBird has it as only a really infrequent Fall visitor.

PUC spectrogram:

Macauley ML163476:

Macauley audio: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/163476

My audio:

[Andrew Whitacre]

Hi Betty! Sounds like a song sparrow. I can hear where the PUC is getting tripped up, by the trill at 2.3 secs. As much as I've enjoyed my PUC, I wish I could tell it my habitat, ha. I'll get Nelson's sparrows occasionally too, and nightly common loons that are actually firetrucks.

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[Betty Widerski]

Thanks - yeah, knowing I do have at least a pair of song sparrows that makes more sense. I wish the puc had an “ignore house sparrows” filter  :-)

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On Apr 13, 2026, at 12:33 PM, Andrew Whitacre <akwhi...@gmail.com> wrote:



Hi Betty! Sounds like a song sparrow. I can hear where the PUC is getting tripped up, by the trill at 2.3 secs. As much as I've enjoyed my PUC, I wish I could tell it my habitat, ha. I'll get Nelson's sparrows occasionally too, and nightly common loons that are actually firetrucks.

On Mon, Apr 13, 2026 at 12:12 PM Betty Widerski <bwidersk...@gmail.com> wrote:

I just got a Birdweather PUC (station # PUC-25338 if anyone else has one) and have been testing it in my E. Arlington yard. Aside from the hundreds of House Sparrow IDs (!) this morning it claims to have ID'd a Nelson's Sparrow with 95% confidence. I'm taking its IDs with a large grain of salt, but I downloaded this one, looked at the spectrogram, and compared it to East Coastal Nelson's Sparrows in Macauley. It's not *quite* but very close. Looking for other opinions, as eBird has it as only a really infrequent Fall visitor.

PUC spectrogram:

<image.png>

Macauley ML163476:

<image.png>

Macauley audio: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/163476

My audio: