A close encounter with an unlikely visiting sparrow today at The Museum of Anthropology at UBC. This small lightly colored sparrow has made this long patch of grass home for the time being. These birds usually spend the summer where the Boreal forests meet the tundra of the far north and then head south the northern states for the winter. It amazes me how these small birds winter the frigid cold winters of the prairies and come out none the worse for wear. Very interesting note about the American Tree Sparrow is that it rarely spends time in trees at all and prefers the grasslands or tundra to forests.