Identify the Brown, Streaky, Juvenile Songbirds of Summer With These Tips

Updated July 2025; originally published July 2014.

By midsummer many young-of-the-year songbirds have fledged from their nests. Almost overnight, the fields and forests seem to fill up with nondescript, unfamiliar-looking birds. These juveniles typically are less bright than adults, with streaky or spotted plumage. It’s good for the birds—helping the youngsters remain inconspicuous to predators—but it can be hard for birders looking to find a match in a field guide or app.

But don’t worry. Even if young birds don’t show the classic field marks you’re used to seeing, they’ll still offer you plenty of clues about who they are. Try using the following 4-step process of elimination, taking the streaky, brown creature in the above photo as an example:

Step 1. With Juveniles, Don’t Stress Over Field Marks

When you’re out birding it’s natural to focus on colors. The problem is that many juvenile birds have similar markings. “Blurry, indistinctly streaked breast, with pale bold edges on wing coverts” describes not only our mystery bird but many others as well.

Still, not all streaky brown birds look the same. In the case of our mystery bird, the very lack of distinct markings helps set it apart from many adult birds. Sure, an adult Song Sparrow is brown and streaky, but it also has strong patterns: well-defined stripes on the head and chevron-shaped streaks on the breast.

Step 2. Take Note of Shape, Behavior, and Habitat

Color pattern is just one of the 4 Keys to Bird ID. It’s also crucial to look at a bird’s Size & Shape, Behavior, and Habitat to get clues you might overlook otherwise.

Size & Shape: a small bird with a thick and sharply pointed bill
Behavior: on the ground
Habitat: open area

For example, both Size & Shape and Behavior help separate this bird from grosbeaks such as Rose-breasted and Black-headed. Female and immature grosbeaks are brown and streaky, but they are stocky, with broad chests and impressively stout bills. And they rarely come to the ground—quite different from our mystery bird.

Step 3. Zero In on the Right Group of Birds

One thing to keep in mind with juvenile songbirds—they have adult-sized bones when they leave the nest. They may have shorter wings and tails than adults because their feathers are not fully grown. But you can rely on clues like bill shape and body proportions to figure out what family your mystery bird belongs to.

Our streaky mystery bird has a pretty standard songbird shape with a round head, slim body, and medium-length tail. But the bill has a distinctive shape. It’s thick at the base, but sharply angled with straight sides that narrow to a sharp point. It’s larger than most sparrow bills but also longer and more tapered than a finch bill.

This bill shape is a classic indication of a bird in the blackbird/oriole family. And this matches the behavior clue too, as blackbirds often come to the ground. See how the mystery bird’s bill is similar shape to a Red-winged Blackbird’s bill?

Step 4. Consider the Alternatives

We still haven’t quite reached an ID for our mystery bird. It seems to be a member of the blackbird family, but it’s slighter and not as streaky as the female Red-winged Blackbird above.

Considering other alternatives, the mystery bird’s plumage is very close to the diffuse, blurry brown of a female House Finch. But the House Finch’s bill is thicker and the top edge is strongly curved in profile. That’s very different from the precise straight edges of the mystery bird’s bill. It’s a subtle difference, but enough to push the ID back towards the blackbird family.

Putting it all together, this brown, streaky bird has a thick but pointed bill and spends time on the ground. It’s in the blackbird family, but not quite as hefty as a Red-winged Blackbird and with a slightly shorter bill. The blackbird family includes large grackles, brilliant orioles, and tubby, long-billed meadowlarks—plus a few species of compact, shorter-billed cowbirds. Adults of the widespread Brown-headed Cowbird are either glossy blackish-brown (males) or uniform brown (females). But the juveniles are streaky brown, with paler buffy edges to the wing feathers—and that’s the identity of our mystery bird: juvenile Brown-headed Cowbird.

Try It out: Streaky Juvenile Birds Quiz

Put this process to the test with this slideshow. We’ll show you a mystery juvenile bird. Take your time. Don’t pay too much attention to color pattern; focus on Size & Shape. After you’ve made your ID, click or swipe to see what the adult looks like.

Summer and fall are a great time to hone your skills at picking out fine details. It’s a switch from springtime birding, when you get to revel in fresh and brilliant breeding plumages. Perhaps best of all, these confusing juveniles don’t last long—they’ll be molting into more familiar plumages before the year is out.