If you aren’t a serious birder you’ll probably find the Henslow’s Sparrow boring. It’s small, drab and it usually hangs out in low clumps of dried grass. Cornell’s website calls them “uncommon and famously inconspicuous.”

The fact that it is uncommon makes it appealing to birders who want to add it to their life list. Last weekend we had a couple that drove up from Texas just to see this bird. The guy said he’d been looking for this bird for 30-years.

Henslow’s Sparrow are steadily declining in number because their grassland habitat is being converted to crop land. The only reason we are lucky enough to have them is that we’ve restored 200-acres of prairie.

I took this photograph this morning. I think we have 4 or 5 nesting pairs of Henslow’s Sparrow on the Prairie Garden Trust property right now.