Song sparrows serenade their way to love: Nature News
I was out back early this morning, drinking coffee and recording the morning chorus of bird songs with Merlin, the Cornell Lab birding App. There is a feature in Merlin called Sound ID that listens to the birds around you and shows real-time suggestions for who’s singing. This has revolutionized birding for me.
Previously, I had a lot of difficulty identifying birds by their calls and songs. I still do, but with Merlin, I get fairly accurate identification of the birds singing around me, helping me to connect the bird with its call. This morning, I recorded a hefty list of birds (over 20 species!), but the bird that dominated the chorus was the song sparrow.
Song sparrows are an often-overlooked bird around here because they are so common. They are also a little brown bird (LBB), this is a nickname used by birders for any small brown bird that is difficult to distinguish, and therefore largely ignored. If you look closely, however, you’ll find that song sparrows are striking birds, and fairly easy to identify. They are here year-round (we are at the northern edge of their year-round range, though with climate change this edge is creeping north). But it’s when the males sing their territorial songs in the spring, is when you can most fully appreciate them.
A russet brown and gray-streaked bird with coarse streaks on its white breast that converge into a dark spot, the song sparrow is one of the more distinctive sparrows in these parts. That breast spot coupled with how easy it is to get a good look at the males as they perch on top of low shrubs and sing their melodic ‘stuttering, clattering’ song (allaboutbirds.org), makes the song sparrow easy to identify with confidence.
It being spring, the males are singing to defend their territory and to attract females. Studies, both in the lab and in the field, have shown that female song sparrows are attracted to both the song and how well it reflects the male’s ability to learn. Females preferred males who were using more learned components in their songs and were better able to match the songs of their song tutors — the adult birds they learned their songs from (allaboutbirds.org).
A long time ago, I learned to identify their song by listening for a series of three notes in a song that Sibley’s Guide to Birds describes as “…trills and clear notes with a slightly husky quality and pleasant gentle rhythm.” Go out and listen for those three distinctive notes, if you haven’t noticed that call before, I bet you will now.
I have never found a song sparrow nest, but assume they are nesting somewhere nearby, or that male wouldn’t be singing from the top of my quince bush every morning. They mostly nest on the ground or low in shrubs and aren’t afraid of humans so will build nests near houses, for example in flower beds. If you want to give these and other ground nesters a chance, please keep your cats inside.
Earth Day, which happened on Monday, is a time to reflect on the state of the natural world around us. Song sparrows have done okay with human neighbors (they are listed as a species of low concern), but in my lifetime the song sparrow population has declined by about 27% (North American Breeding Bird Survey). That means, back when I was born (early 1960s), there were potentially almost 30% more song sparrows in my backyard than there are now. This makes me wonder just how sparse the morning chorus must be now compared with the old days.
The environmental legislation that has been enacted since the first Earth Day has resulted in cleaner air and water, making strides towards protecting wildlife and critical habitat. We have a lot to celebrate, but there is still much we can do. We can start by getting to know our wild neighbors, learning what they need for survival and rewilding our landscapes (both our own backyards and public places) to accommodate those needs. If you don’t already know all the birds in your neighborhood, getting to know the ubiquitous song sparrow is a great place to start.
More:Get ready to put your hummingbird feeders out. See where they are with interactive map
Susan Pike, a researcher and an environmental sciences and biology teacher at Dover High School, welcomes your ideas for future column topics. Send your photos and observations to [email protected]. Read more of her Nature News columns at Seacoastonline.com and pikes-hikes.com, and follow her on Instagram @pikeshikes.
