Return of Bird of the Week: Rufous-winged Sparrow

The Rufous-winged Sparrow is just barely a North American bird, if you are a birder who keeps lists. This sparrow just barely occurs in southern Arizona; most of its range is in Medico which, for North American birders, isn’t part of North America. Geography doesn’t enter into it. The Rufous-winged has the distinction of being one of the last bird species in the United States to be discovered and described. It’s an uncommon resident of local distribution in the Sonoran Desert region from south-central Arizona to northern Sinaloa, Mexico. The species prefers the scrub and grasses along washes and streams….