[Called also: SMITH'S LONGSPUR, AOU 1998]
Length -- 6.5 inches. About the size of a large English sparrow.
Male and Female -- Upper parts marked with black, brown, and
white, like a sparrow; brown predominant. Male bird with more
black about head, shoulders, and tail feathers, and a whitish
patch, edged with black, under the eye. Underneath pale brown,
shading to buff. Hind claw or spur conspicuous.
Range -- Interior of North America, from the arctic coast to
Illinois and and Texas; Migrations -- Winter visitor. Without
fixed season.
Confined to a narrower range than the Lapland longspur, this bird, quite
commonly found on the open prairie districts of the middle West in winter, is,
nevertheless, so very like its cousin that the same description of their
habits might very well answer for both. Indeed, both these birds are often
seen in the same flock. Larks and the ubiquitous sparrows, too, intermingle
with them with the familiarity that only the starvation rations of midwinter,
and not true sociability, can effect; and, looking out upon such a
heterogeneous flock of brown birds as they are feeding together on the frozen
ground, only the trained field ornithologist would find it easy to point out
the painted longspurs.
Certain peculiarities are noticeable, however. Longspurs squat while resting;
then, when flushed, they run quickly and lightly, and "rise with a sharp
click, repeated several times in quick succession, and move with an easy,
undulating motion for a short distance, when they alight very suddenly,
seeming to fall perpendicularly several feet to the ground." Another
peculiarity of their flight is their habit of flying about in circles, to and
fro, keeping up a constant chirping or call. It is only in the mating season,
when we rarely hear them, that the longspurs have the angelic manner of
singing as they fly, like the skylark. The colors of the males, among the
several longspurs, may differ widely, but the indistinctly marked females are
so like each other that only their mates, perhaps, could tell them apart.