How does the song sparrow see?

The song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) is a bird in the order Passeriformes. Its eyes belong to the vision type UV songbird, parrot and hummingbird: 4 cones with a true UV (UVS) cone and oil droplets, high CFF; UV plumage patterns visible.

Measured in this species: sharpness, field of view, foveas and night vision. Measured core: measured values on at least 3 of the 6 dials. Every value below carries its evidence level and sources; nothing is typed by hand.

Sample scene drawn in code: a face with red lips, a green shirt, red and green apples, flowers and a colour strip, as a person sees it. — The sample scene as a person sees it.

The same sample scene rendered by the See Like Animals engine for the song sparrow's eyes, using the values in the table below. — The same scene rendered for the song sparrow (60° field of view, daylight).

See your photo as the song sparrowThis species is part of the full catalogue in the tool (full unlock). Your photo stays on your device.

What stands out

It has 4 colour receptor classes, including ultraviolet; people have 3.
Its sharpest vision resolves 7.07 cycles per degree: the finest stripe pattern it can tell apart from grey.
Its eyes cover about 325° around the head, with 40.5° seen by both eyes at once.
It stops seeing flicker at 100 Hz, against 60 Hz for people in this dataset, so fast motion looks about 1.7 times slower to it.^[15][16]
Activity pattern: diurnal.

The six dials

Evidence levels: how the tiers work. "Measured" means a value measured in this species; "Estimated" values come from a close relative or an eye-size formula.

Vision values for the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia), catalogue-v1
Dial	Value	Evidence	Sources
Colour	Colour receptors 4 receptor classes: 367.5 nm (UVS), 443 nm (SWS (blue)), 502.5 nm (MWS (green)), 570 nm (LWS (long)) receptor set of nearest measured relative Serinus canaria (same order Passeriformes)	Group default	^[1][2]
Colour	Ultraviolet yes: at least one receptor peaks in the ultraviolet	Group default
Sharpness	Acuity 7.07 cycles per degree median of 1 anatomical-ganglion rows (method priority rule)	Measured	^[3]
Field of view	Binocular overlap 40.5° median of 2 rows (eyes-at-rest rows preferred)	Measured	^[4][5]
	Total field of view 325° rule: total = 360 - blind area	Derived	^[4]
	Blind area behind the head 35°	Measured	^[4]
	Eye placement lateral frontal if binocular overlap >= 60 deg, else lateral	Derived	^[4][5]
Sharp zones (foveas)	Number of foveas 1 retinal topography	Measured (not re-verified)	^[6]
Sharp zones (foveas)	Fovea type single central fovea (displaced dorso-temporally from retinal centre)	Measured (not re-verified)	^[6]
Night vision	Activity pattern diurnal mode of 7 rows (of 7 rows): diurnal; not_nocturnal	Measured (not re-verified)	^{[7][8][9][10][11][12][13]}
Night vision	Rods vs cones cone-dominated nocturnal -> rod-dominated; crepuscular / cathemeral / mixed -> mixed; diurnal -> cone-dominated	Derived	^{[7][8][9][10][11][12][13]}
Motion (flicker fusion)	Flicker fusion frequency 100 Hz median of 7 relatives in order Passeriformes: Passer domesticus, Taeniopygia guttata, Molothrus ater, Sturnus vulgaris, Cyanistes caeruleus, Ficedula albicollis	Group default	^{[14][15][16][17]}

Other senses

magnetoreception: NOT RENDERED (no agreed visual percept) (Group default)

Related animals

European starling same vision type
House sparrow same vision type
American tree sparrow same vision type
Brown-headed cowbird same vision type
Chipping sparrow same vision type
Dark-eyed junco same vision type

More birds: all birds with measured vision data.

Sources

Longcore T. 2023. A compendium of photopigment peak sensitivities and visual spectral response curves of terrestrial wildlife to guide design of outdoor nighttime lighting. Basic Appl Ecol 73:40-50. doi:10.1016/j.baae.2023.09.002. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8432720
VPOD in-vivo (MSP / single-cell) lambda max compendium, file scp_cleaned.csv, VPOD GitHub (Frazer et al. 2025 bioRxiv 10.1101/2025.08.22.671864). github.com/VisualPhysiologyDB/visual-physiology-opsin-db/tree/main/scripts_n_notebooks/vpod_ML_workflows/mine_n_match/data_sources/lmax/vpod
Caves EM, Brandley NC, Johnsen S (2018) Visual acuity and the evolution of signals. Trends Ecol Evol 33:358-372. Supplementary Tables S1-S3.. doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.03.001
Tyrrell LP, Moore BA, Loftis C, Fernandez-Juricic E 2017 (data 2017). The hawk-eyed songbird: retinal morphology, eye shape, and visual fields of an aerial insectivore. Am Nat 189(6). Dryad doi:10.5061/dryad.n7140.. doi.org/10.1086/691404
Tyrrell LP, Fernandez-Juricic E 2017. Avian binocular vision: it's not just about what birds can see, it's also about what they can't. PLoS ONE 12(3): e0173235. S1 Table.. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0173235
Moore BA, Tyrrell LP, Pita D, Bininda-Emonds ORP, Fernandez-Juricic E 2017. Does retinal configuration make the head and eyes of foveate birds move? Sci Rep 7: 38406. Appendix 1.. doi.org/10.1038/srep38406
Anderson SR, Wiens JJ. 2017. Out of the dark: 350 million years of conservatism and evolution in diel activity patterns in vertebrates. Evolution 71:1944-1959. Dryad doi:10.5061/dryad.fg700. doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fg700
Angielczyk KD, Schmitz L 2014. Nocturnality in synapsids predates the origin of mammals by over 100 million years. Proc R Soc B 281: 20141642. Dryad doi:10.5061/dryad.1v8kj.. doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1642
Light conditions and the evolution of the visual system in birds (figshare dataset, SupplementaryDataset1). doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22116371.v3
Choiniere JN, Neenan JM, Schmitz L, Ford DP, Chapelle KEJ, Balanoff AM, Sipla JS, Georgi JA, Walsh SA, Norell MA, Xu X, Clark JM, Benson RBJ. 2021. Evolution of vision and hearing modalities in theropod dinosaurs. Science 372:610-613. doi:10.1126/science.abe7941. Data: https://osf.io/teq73/. doi.org/10.1126/science.abe7941
Wilman H, Belmaker J, Simpson J, de la Rosa C, Rivadeneira MM, Jetz W. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027. BirdFuncDat.txt. doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3559887.v1
Schmitz & Motani 2011. Nocturnality in dinosaurs inferred from scleral ring and orbit morphology. Science 332:705. Comparative data redeposited in Xing et al. 2020 supplementary information (Zenodo).. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3591994
Moura et al. 2024. A phylogeny-informed characterisation of global tetrapod traits addresses data gaps and biases. PLoS Biol 22:e3002658. TetrapodTraits v3.0.1.. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22536349
Boström JE, Dimitrova M, Canton C, Håstad O, Qvarnström A, Ödeen A. 2016. Ultra-rapid vision in birds. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151099. S1 Table. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151099
Healy K, McNally L, Ruxton GD, Cooper N, Jackson AL. 2013. Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information. Animal Behaviour 86:685-696. Table 1. doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.06.018
Inger R, Bennie J, Davies TW, Gaston KJ. 2014. Potential biological and ecological effects of flickering artificial light. PLoS ONE 9(5): e98631. Table 3. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098631
Lafitte A, Sordello R, Legrand M, Nicolas V, Obein G, Reyjol Y. 2022. A flashing light may not be that flashy: A systematic review on critical fusion frequencies. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0279718. S10 File (CFF database). doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279718

Every value cites its sources (all sources). Data: catalogue-v1, built 2026-09-29. Accuracy notes: how accurate is this?