A Sparrow Collage for Mosaic Monday

To me I could classify spring as a seasonal sparrow mosaic.
when spring arrives I am usually saying "Good-bye" to those little northern sparrows, Tree Sparrows, which spend much of winter with us.  Then as spring nears and appears, we welcome the beautiful, little musical Song Sparrows, then as spring advances, a lucky few receive visits from Fox Sparrows, and perhaps some experience a "rare" sighting of a Field Sparrow.  We have had both Fox Sparrows and Field sparrows in Bird Alley in the past, but not this year.   We have been very happy the past couple of weeks playing host to a few White-throated sparrows; and much to our delight we spied

a couple of Chipping Sparrows in our feeder area.  The Chipping Sparrows ( shown above) are very recent arrivals.  Hopefully in the coming weeks we shall also welcome the handsome White-Crowned Sparrow.

But often people ask in confusion and puzzlement, how can you tell the sparrow species, one from the other?

A year or so ago I created a Sparrow collage ( shown above) and
then
 a key to accompany the collage. 
I hope these collages might prove useful to a few of my readers in identifying the different sparrow species.

I am linking this post to Mary's Monday Mosaic.  Mary's mosaic meme can be found at  her Dear Little Red House at:http://dearlittleredhouse.blogspot.ca/