Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)

Song Neighborhoods

July 19, 2023 Birds of the same species don’t always sing exactly the same as each other. But those that live near each other sometimes have similar songs. Scientists refer to this pattern as a song neighborhood. It’s less like a regional dialect among people that’s found over a large area. It’s more

How Birds Produce Sound

July 8, 2023 Nearly all birds produce sound through an organ unique to birds, the syrinx. In many songbirds, the syrinx is not much bigger than a raindrop. Extremely efficient, it uses nearly all the air that passes through it. By contrast, a human creates sound using only 2% of the air exhaled through

Learning to Listen - Patterns in Songs of the Song Sparrow

May 8, 2023 Heidi Hoelting, a musician, listens carefully to the songs of birds. In her piano studio at her home in the woods, she wrote down several variations of the different sounds a Song Sparrow makes. In this BirdNote, Nancy Rumbel plays some of those variations on a bamboo whistle. Listen to

Haley Scott on New York's Indigenous Landscapes

November 11, 2022 Haley Scott lives in the Bronx, where she helps other people experience the joy of New York’s wildlife as a bird walk leader. But she maintains a connection with another community of birds outside the city, on the Unkechaug Nation’s land, where she visits her dad’s side of the family

Leave the Leaves

October 10, 2022 To help backyard birds through the winter, do less. Leave the leaves or rake them under plantings. The tasty insects and spiders underneath will be food for the towhee and this Song Sparrow. Don’t deadhead. Pine Siskins and goldfinches love to snack on dead flowerheads. Make an insect

Light and Song - Sparks in Winter

February 3, 2022 Even in winter, some birds — including Black-capped Chickadees, House Finches, and American Robins — greet the sunrise with song. We normally hear the dawn chorus in springtime, when birds sing to define territory and attract mates. But birds don’t breed by warmth alone. Day length is a

Song Sparrows Across the Continent

January 21, 2022 Song Sparrows can be heard singing almost everywhere in the United States. People have recorded their song along rivers and lakes, in cities and towns, and in fields and forests. This show was produced by World According to Sound. BirdNote and World According to Sound are teaming up for an

Why Some Birds Sing in the Winter

December 25, 2021 By late January, some resident birds, such as the Northern Mockingbird, are beginning their spring singing. When you step outside on a particularly sunny day this winter, a Fox Sparrow like the one pictured here may be warming up for the coming spring. And as far north as British Columbia

Margaret Morse Nice and the Song Sparrow

December 20, 2021 Few backyard birds in North America are more widespread than the Song Sparrow. But it was the study of this seemingly unremarkable bird that helped shape modern ornithology. In 1928, Margaret Morse Nice began carefully observing Song Sparrows near Columbus, Ohio, where she lived. For eight

Birds in the Winter Garden

November 8, 2021 Put your winter garden to work as a haven for birds. Leaves and brush left to compost provide foraging and roosting places, smother this year’s weeds, and feed next spring’s plant growth. Watch for juncos and towhees in the leaf litter and wrens in the brush. Maybe even a Song Sparrow

Song Sparrow in your Brush Pile

April 28, 2021 Song Sparrows are found throughout the United States and into Southern Canada. To bring them into your garden, plant thick, low vegetation, or create a brush pile. This sparrow is celebrated - and named - for its singing. Without its melodious song, this furtive bird could be overlooked

Sparrows Kick, Robins Pick

January 2, 2021 If you watch backyard birds, you will likely see some characteristic behaviors. One example is "foraging" styles — the behaviors that a bird uses to find food. Some birds, such as sparrows, are famous for their "double-scratch" behavior. The bird jumps forward and back, quite quickly

Backyard Bird Science

April 17, 2020 One of the best studies of a North American bird ever written was published by a citizen-scientist named Margaret Morse Nice. Margaret Nice banded more than 800 Song Sparrows in a 40-acre tract in Ohio. Most of us have neither the time nor the 40 acres, but there is still much we can do

Spark Bird: A Lifetime in Science

October 14, 2019 When he was just a kid, Gordon Orians kept notebooks about the birds he saw. And then he realized he could make discoveries – he could add to the body of knowledge and contribute to science. That opened a whole new world to him, and he has spent the rest of his life studying birds and the

Birdsong Wanes with the Season

September 5, 2019 By this time in September, most migratory birds have departed. Many resident birds remain, but their voices are now quiet. During fall and winter, birds don't need to sing to establish a breeding territory or attract a mate. Many songbirds lose the ability to sing. The part of the brain

Mating for Life

February 10, 2019 Most bird species in North America mate for a single breeding season. Some may team up again the following year, just because both stay in - or return to - the same territory. Fewer than one-fifth of Song Sparrow pairs are reunited. Hawks, eagles, and ravens have wide territories, thus few

Song Sparrows Learn to Sing

August 27, 2016 Young male Song Sparrows learn about 10 songs from adult tutors - sometimes from their fathers, but not always. And they learn in stages: 1) "subsong," when the birds babble in a quiet and unstructured way; 2) the "plastic" stage, which contains recognizable adult syllables but is still

Voices and Vocabularies - Three Hidden Sparrows

March 5, 2016 Some birds have a remarkable knack for staying out of sight. Often we don’t know they’re nearby, until they sing. But with a little practice, we can learn to identify birds without seeing them. Listen to the songs of the Song Sparrow, the Chipping Sparrow, and the White-throated Sparrow —

Birds of the Briar Patch

August 16, 2013 Uncle Remus told us how Br’er Rabbit fooled Br’er Fox by pleading, “Pleeeeze don’t throw me in that briar patch.” Many birds, like this Song Sparrow, thrive in dense, thorny blackberry thickets. Other birds that make these thorny thickets home include California Quails, wrens, and many

John Burroughs II

January 21, 2010 John Burroughs, one of the masters of American nature writing, wrote "The birds do indeed begin with the day. The farmer who is in the field at work while he can yet see stars catches their first matin hymns. In the longest June days the robin strikes up about half past three o'clock..."