Listen to the Elaborate Song of the Brewer’s Sparrow
A resident of the sagebrush steppe, this little bird has one mighty complicated call.
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Transcript:
This is BirdNote.
Every spring, one of the most musical and complex bird songs on the continent rings forth from the sagebrush of the Columbia Basin in Washington State.
The Brewer鈥檚 Sparrow, a migratory songbird that winters mostly in western Mexico, returns in April to the sage. Sagebrush habitat, often called shrub-steppe, is a common landscape of the interior West. However, each year more and more of it is being cleared for irrigated crops and development.
The diminutive Brewer鈥檚 Sparrow shares its nesting habitat with other fancy singers like the long-winded Sage Thrasher and the melodic Vesper Sparrow. All three of these birds are sandy brown in color, blending so seamlessly with their surroundings that only a sharp eye can pick them out. Yet even among this accomplished company, the Brewer鈥檚 song stands apart. While most birds offer a melody, the Brewer鈥檚 Sparrow seems to perform an entire aria.
Find all our episodes and a lot more information about birds at our website BirdNote.org. I鈥檓 Mary McCann.
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Credits:
Written by Bob Sundstrom
Narrator: Mary McCann
Producer: John Kessler
Managing Producer: Jason Saul
Editor: Ashley Ahearn
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Assistant Producer: Mark Bramhill.
Song of the Brewer鈥檚 Sparrow provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by G.A. Keller.
BirdNote鈥檚 theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.漏 2019 Tune In to Nature.org; June 2012/2019
ID# 060705BRSP BRSP-01b