Central breast spot is dark. Has a gray eyebrow running from beak across top of eye to back of head. Also has a dark stripe extending downward along the whitish throat from the beak to the top of the breast. Prefers shrubby habitat and brushy cover along streams, ponds and other wetlands. Also likes rural roadways with shrubby cover and rural back yards.
Song is beautiful and one of the most attractive of the sparrows.
Eats insects in the summer by foraging through bushes, grasses and trees for grasshoppers, beetles, flies, wasps and other insects. Will also eat grass and weed seeds as well as some waste grain and wild fruit. Nests are either on the ground hidden by clumps of weeds and grasses or in shrubby cover a few feet off the ground.