This highly variable, but distinctive species breeds along the California coast and also in the Great Basin but skips over most of interior California except during the winter and migration. Savannah Sparrow is the only member of the genus Passerculus. Precise subspecific identification is speculative outside the breeding season because of the high degree of individual variation within subspecies. Birds breeding here have been assigned to P. s. alaudinus, sometimes called Bryant’s Savannah Sparrow, a California endemic and species of special concern. It has suffered recent population declines and range contraction. It is a fairly heavily pigmented race in the sandwichensis group.
HBW merges most of the subspecies, recognizing only two, but splitting three southwestern races into separate species. Under this scheme, our bird would be nominate P. s. sandwichensis. The name sandwichensis refers to Unalaska I. and Sandwich Sound, Alaska, not to Hawaii.
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References:
Rising, J., Christie, D.A. & Garcia, E.F.J. (2017). Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis). In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. (retrieved from https://www.hbw.com/node/61918 on 9 November 2017).
Shuford, W. D., and Gardali, T., editors. (2008). California Bird Species of Special Concern: A ranked assessment of species, subspecies, and distinct populations of birds of immediate conservation concern in California. Studies of Western Birds 1. Western Field Ornithologists, Camarillo, California, and California Department of Fish and Game, Sacramento.
Wheelwright, N. T. and James D. Rising. 2008. Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis), version 2.0. In The Birds of North America (P. G. Rodewald, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bna.45