Episode 29: White-Throated Sparrow – Voice of the Wild

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.

Most people remember this bird because of a very particular mnemonic. It goes like this: “Oh, Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada.” That song is given from brush piles in forest clearings, brush piles in messy fields, even brush piles in your yard, especially if there’s a bird a feeder to scratch beneath. It can also be found in thickets and dense shrubs but brush piles are a pretty good bet. While most sparrows are notoriously difficult to identify by sight, this is one of the few that isn’t. It has a distinctive yellow spot just ahead of its eye, either white or tan stripes on the head, and its namesake white throat.

This is the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) from the family of new-world sparrows, Passerellidae. Some birds have a single color form, while others have two. When a species has two color forms, those forms are usually tied to biological sex; with one sex taking the brighter of the two options. The white-throated sparrow is a fascinating deviation from this norm. LIke those other birds, It has two color forms: one is drab; it has tan headstripes and the other is bright; it has white headstripes. But unlike the other birds, both sexes of white-throated sparrow have both color forms. What’s more is that one color form nearly always mates with the opposite color form, so the White throated sparrow effectively has four sexes: bright males, dull males, bright females, and dull females. Luckily they all sing about the same song (though bright-colored birds, whether male or female, do most of the singing.) Here it is again.

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.