Episode Number
28
Episode Show Notes / Description
White-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys).
The handsome winter visitor with a crisp cap and a sweet whistle.
Voice of the Wild is a podcast about wildlife and the wild sounds they make.
The following Cornell Lab | Macaulay Library recordings were used in this episode:
- White-crowned Sparrow song by Arthur A. Allen and Peter Paul Kellogg (ML509702)
- White-crowned Sparrow call by Wil Hershberger (ML509703)
- White-crowned Sparrow alternate song #1 by Arthur A. Allen and David G. Allen (ML509709)
- White-crowned Sparrow alternate song #2 by Geoffrey A. Keller (ML509704)
- White-crowned Sparrow alternate song #3 by Leonard J. Peyton (ML509705)
Sources and more:
- Cornell’s All About Birds
- Audubon
- Audubon videoguide to 505 birds of North America
- Field guide to hotspots and birds in Illinois by Colin Dobson
- Peterson field guide to the birds (Fourth edition)
- Sibley Birds East
Transcript
This is Illinois Extension’s Voice of the Wild. A new wild voice in just a moment, so find someplace quiet, take a deep breath, and enjoy.
My Christmas bird count doesn’t feel complete until my friends and I find the local flock of these handsome winter visitors. We search for them in an old weedy hedgerow next to the university's arboretum, but they can be found starting in October flocking in a variety of undisturbed brushy habitats. They’ll visit neighborhoods too, just as long as there is some good cover and few feeders around. Their song is a sweet whistle followed by a pleasant buzz. Unlike most other sparrows, they’re almost as easy to identify by sight as they are by sound. They have a crisp striped crown - the females alternating rusty brown with gray, and the males black with white.
This is the white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) from the family of new-world sparrows, Passerellidae. The White-crowned sparrow learns its song from the others in its flock. Because of this, they develop regional dialects. At the beginning of the episode I played a song which I felt was closest to what I usually hear in central Illinois - I’ll play that song again, but with a few others from different parts of the US. If you’d like to hear more of those dialects, check out the link in the description to a few more of Cornell's recordings.
Thank you to the Macaulay library at the Cornell lab for our bird sounds. And thank you for tuning in to learn a new wild voice with Illinois Extension.
My Christmas bird count doesn’t feel complete until my friends and I find the local flock of these handsome winter visitors. We search for them in an old weedy hedgerow next to the university's arboretum, but they can be found starting in October flocking in a variety of undisturbed brushy habitats. They’ll visit neighborhoods too, just as long as there is some good cover and few feeders around. Their song is a sweet whistle followed by a pleasant buzz. Unlike most other sparrows, they’re almost as easy to identify by sight as they are by sound. They have a crisp striped crown - the females alternating rusty brown with gray, and the males black with white.
This is the white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) from the family of new-world sparrows, Passerellidae. The White-crowned sparrow learns its song from the others in its flock. Because of this, they develop regional dialects. At the beginning of the episode I played a song which I felt was closest to what I usually hear in central Illinois - I’ll play that song again, but with a few others from different parts of the US. If you’d like to hear more of those dialects, check out the link in the description to a few more of Cornell's recordings.
Thank you to the Macaulay library at the Cornell lab for our bird sounds. And thank you for tuning in to learn a new wild voice with Illinois Extension.