Technology
Song Sparrow
In this episode of Calling All Birds, hosts Mark and Alison explore the fascinating world of the song sparrow, a common yet diverse bird found across North America. They discuss the bird's varied...
Song Sparrow
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
Speaker A
Hello, and welcome to Calling All Birds.
Speaker B
The podcast where we learn the art of birding by ear together. I'm Mark.
Speaker A
And I'm Alison, and the bird for.
Speaker B
This week's episode is the song sparrow.
Speaker A
Yay.
Speaker B
Yay. I'm really excited to talk about something song sparrows today. But first, I want to do something a little bit different and talk about some of the reviews that we've gotten this week. So we're very fortunate to have wonderful listeners like yourself who are willing to leave us kind words on Apple podcasts, which goes a long way towards helping get the word for the podcast out to other people. So we really appreciated it, and we wanted to set aside a little bit of time at the start of each episode to read the new reviews that we've gotten this week.
Speaker A
Yeah. So I'd love to read this. And by the way, it feels. I don't know, it warms my heart so much to just hear these kind words from all of you, and it makes me feel less alone in this world. So thank you very much. We had a review from Shadowlink 1138. They said, fun, entertaining way to learn bird sounds, and I started birding a few months ago. This podcast has been an enjoyable, memorable way to learn various bird sounds. Looking forward to additional episodes.
Speaker B
Very nice.
Speaker A
Yeah, really, really kind words. And then toast and Mandy wrote love. I'm an amateur birder and I love this podcast. All I can say is give us more episodes. Listen to all available episodes within a few days.
Speaker B
Really cool. I'm glad that the older episodes are just as useful to be listened to as the more recent ones, I think. Obviously, the sounds haven't changed, so definitely trying to create content that is useful for more than just the week or however long it's our most recent episode.
Speaker A
Yeah, birding's always good.
Speaker B
Burning is always good.
Speaker A
And, you know, the great thing about it is that the older you get, the more people will end up birding with you. It seems like it's just a hobby that will age very gracefully.
Speaker B
Awesome. So next, let's dive into the vocabulary of the week real quick. Our vocab word for this week is under slurred. So it's one of the five basic pitch patterns we've already talked about. Monotone, which is when a pitch doesn't change, it just stays the same. We've talked about upslurge, where it rises in pitch over time. And we've talked about down slurred, where the pitch lowers over time. Under slurred is when there's a fall Then a rise appearing and sounding lowest in the middle. So if you think about, like, the letter U on a spectre graph, like, that would be what, the shape of the sound. It goes down and then comes back up, depending on how quickly it does this. You may or may not hear it. And I think, you know, we'll listen to an example today where it's a little bit fast, but that's our vocab for the week under slurred. It's when the pitch falls and then rises again before the end of the note.
Speaker A
That's convenient that it also starts with a U because it makes the U shape. I was, like, trying to figure out what that would look like, and I'm drawing in the air a U shape.
Speaker B
This is true.
Speaker A
She was doing this before he called it out. I was like, I'm gonna know this.
Speaker B
All right. So should we talk a little bit about the background for song sparrows? Like, what kind of birds are these? What are we talking about?
Speaker A
They're like a whole. I mean, song sparrows are within the group of sparrows, and there are so many of them across the United States, North America. There's actually 24 subspecies and 52 forms. So, like, they. They vary in how they look, but they're all very similar and very common.
Speaker B
Yeah, incredibly common. They're everywhere. I think they're in every single state and province in the continental North America, North America. And. And like you mentioned, there are so many different subspecies. And for me, I mean, they do look similar in a lot of ways, but. But not similar enough to where I don't always think, ooh, what kind of bird was that? And then realize, like, oh, it's a song sparrow.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Because there. There is a lot of variation between these subspecies. I mean, compared to other birds, the variation you see in other birds.
Speaker A
Yeah, their plumage will look, like, significantly darker or lighter, depending on where they are in the country.
Speaker B
Yeah, yeah. And. And their behavior is also, in my opinion, highly variable. They. They'll show up in pretty much any open habitat. They tend to hang out in the range between, like, the ground and. And, you know, 15ft up or whatever, basically right in our faces. But then they kind of act differently. Like, it's not unusual to see a song sparrow, like, perched out on, you know, the end of a branch or the. The top of a fence post and singing its song. But it's also not unusual to see a song sparrow kind of doing its own thing, trying to stay out of, you know, sight, like, jumping around in some. Some foliage or In a shrub.
Speaker A
Yeah, it was. I mean, and this could be an assumption because, you know, any female bird that's like, a little brown job, I always think that's got to be a sparrow. But, you know, know, it isn't always. But with. With sparrows, it seems like the females, you know, hop around in shrubs and things lower to the ground, and the males are the ones that are like, please listen to my song. And I am all the way up on the top of this tree.
Speaker B
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And there's. There's. I think when I started birding, I don't know that there was another bird that I looked up the same bird as many times, getting a picture of a bird or getting a good view on a bird and thinking, oh, oh, I just saw a new bird I've never seen before, because, you know, we were new and so many times realizing, like, oh, it's another song sparrow. Which is one of the reasons why I'm excited to talk about songs and calls, because that's very helpful for recognizing even before visually, like, oh, there is a song sparrow in this area. Can really help with my managing my expectations.
Speaker A
Yeah, I've noticed that, too, just in the last couple weeks, consistently going, what is that bird? Oh, song sparrow. Like, again and again and again. Because we've, you know, mastered these other bird calls that are pretty common, but this is one that keeps coming up. Um, and I gotta learn it so that I'm not always thinking, there's a new bird right there.
Speaker B
Yeah. All right, so let's talk about the songs and calls, and let's start with the song. I am also very excited about this because this is the first song that we're covering where the. The things we've learned in previous weeks leading up to this will help us, because there's not one song sparrow song. Like, you can't just learn and memorize a single song. But they do have a form or structure to their songs that, if you've listened to our previous episodes of our podcast, you have the vocabulary to describe and to parse in your brain to really get the general shape here. Okay, so that general shape is. It's a. It's a. Let's see. Their songs are musical series consisting of single notes, buzzes, and trills. So they intermix, like, going from, like, maybe a series of musical notes to a trill to a buzz to some more musical notes, and they kind of switch that up for, like, two to four seconds, and then oftentimes they'll repeat that same one. A handful of times. It almost always starts with a series, which I think is. Is really helpful that they almost always start with a series. So just to give you an idea, now that we've described it, maybe let's listen to a few. So rather than just having. We've got a few different song sparrow songs to cover. They're all of that same format, but we're going to spend a little bit less time on each one. The first thing that I wanted to do, though, was just play all five of them back to back to back so you can hear. Start to hear what I just described how that actually sounds when it happens. Okay, so I'm going to play five different songs one after the other.
Speaker A
And you don't expect me to have them all memorized with. No.
Speaker B
Then what we'll do is we'll. We'll go back through each one and just really briefly talk about the differences and similarities and in each one. But we won't. We won't. This isn't like a memorization song. This is more of a recognition experience and recognize the pattern. Yeah.
Speaker A
Cool.
Speaker B
So. Okay, here we go. All right, so that was five different song sparrows giving five different versions of the song Sparrow song.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
Any initial thoughts before we dive into specific ones?
Speaker A
I think it was like the third. Third or the fourth one that I laughed a little bit about because it sounded like a robot, like R2D2 or some very adorable squeaky robot at the end.
Speaker B
Yeah, yeah, that's. I think that's a good point. I think their. Their songs, sometimes they. They like to switch between, like, high and low, loud and softer. So, like, you do get this, like, unnatural, almost jarring, like, rapid change in the different sections of the song.
Speaker A
I did also notice just not about one specific one, but it did sound like they were speeding up their tempo a little bit. And that might have been like, the only consistency that I could kind of, besides beginning with the series. But, you know, I. I can't really tell which way it's shifting, except it's speeding up a little bit.
Speaker B
Yeah. So I think that's another really good point. Do you mean like the tempo of the entire song or. Because something that I noticed about song sparrow songs is the tempo of that initial intro series. So as we mentioned, it oftentimes starts with a series. That series can change in. In tempo. Is that what you mean? Or do you mean like the sections of the song changing more rapidly as it goes on? I think both are true.
Speaker A
Yeah. I think it was just an overall sense that Things are speeding up, even though I can't really point to exactly which part is or where the transition is exactly. But I think maybe we can dissect it better when we hear them. 1.
Speaker B
I agree, but I do think it's important what you're. What you're mentioning, because one of the pattern recognition techniques for Song Sparrow is I often feel like you kind of fall into their song and it gets more rapid as it goes.
Speaker A
Oh, I like that.
Speaker B
So let's listen more closely to the first song, the first one we have. If you listen, pay attention to the components of it, you'll notice that there's three intro notes. So the series at the start has three notes before it goes into some short trills. So let's listen. Did you hear the three notes at the start, before it started? And then it was kind of a buzzy trill, another note or two, I don't know exactly. And then. And then a more musical trill.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Let's listen to it one more time.
Speaker A
I'm trying to remember it. And did you ever play that game like Simon, where you would have to repeat the notes? Yeah, I'm just like, I would do terrible.
Speaker B
So you, you would. You would destroy me at a game of Song Sparrow, Simon. Because I, I didn't get much, much fast, like the fourth note in that. But yeah, that's. That's exactly right. I'm. I kind of appreciative that we don't have to try to just memorize this, that, that we're. We. We do have an overall structure. So let's talk about the next song. Um, this one also has three intro notes followed by a faster series than short trills. So the notes are the same, but there's like a slow series of three of them and then a faster series, more of them, and then it gets into the trills. So let's listen.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
Again, you have that accelerating, rapid change between series and trills. A mix of buzzes and trills, more or less musical. A lot of juxtaposition. Like, that's almost like the nature of it is. Um, Is that.
Speaker A
Now, do they always have three distinct sections or is it not always three?
Speaker B
It's not always three.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
Um. Yeah.
Speaker A
All right. The more. You know.
Speaker B
In fact, I don't even know that. That, like. I think if you actually analyze the. Even the two that we've. We've listened to, I think if you analyze them on, like a visualization, I think you'd see that there's more than three sections to even Both of those songs.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
All right. The next one only has two intro notes before it gets into a faster series and then drills. So once again starts off kind of slow with notes, and then gets into not quite a trill. The notes are slow enough to count, so it's a series, but it's a faster series. And then it gets into the trills and notes and stuff. So let's listen to this. Did you hear that?
Speaker A
I don't know why, but that one sounds more familiar to me.
Speaker B
Interesting. I want to hear it one more time.
Speaker A
But maybe I just turned my brain off and stopped overanalyzing and just relaxed into it for a second. I don't know.
Speaker B
Okay, the fourth one this time we'll listen again. There's four intro notes, so you can try to follow along with those before it starts to get into the alternating patterns that are probably too rapid to really break down effectively.
Speaker A
That one's my favorite.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Yeah, I would love to hear that in real life. I would be very excited to see the robot that made that sound.
Speaker B
Yeah, that one was a little bit less musical than the others, I think. Yeah. And then the last one, the fifth one, this one has three intro notes. And interestingly, in our previous episode, we made a joke about one of the red winged blackbirds. The female songs can. A specific sample sounded like Beethoven's fifth Sympathy. So Symphony. Right. Well, unintentionally, I had no idea that. That some people say the intro to song sparrow songs can sound like Beethoven's fifth Symphony. I didn't realize that until we were doing research for this episode. But the fifth one, I think, does the most. So let's listen to that real.
Speaker A
Okay, I did hear that.
Speaker B
So just the first three notes and then. And then the trill being the duh.
Speaker A
Yeah, yeah. And then it goes off and does some jazz.
Speaker B
Yeah. And then it's just R2D2.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Okay. So that's the song sparrow song. I think another thing to keep in mind, especially if. If this is a little bit overwhelming, is that they're not shy about singing like. Like many of the birds that we've covered so far on the podcast, Song Sparrows will. They'll sing their song out like it's. It's one of the things they do while perching, so it's comical.
Speaker A
There will be, like, you know, a branch at the top of a tree with nothing there except a stick. And then them. They really present themselves.
Speaker B
Or like you'll be walking on a path with. With a fence next to it, and they'll just flitter onto one of the posts up ahead of you and start singing.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
So it can be helpful to just watch them doing their song and to try to. Try to keep in mind that there is this kind of structure to it, that it's not about trying to memorize their exact song, but just to start to hear the different components of it and, and doing that for the birds in your area. Because there are regional dialects, you know, like other songbirds, songs are taught and passed down. And so even though there will be variation even within your area, you can start to learn the specific song sparrow songs for. For your birds.
Speaker A
So we've, we've learned the framework, and now we just gotta get out there and bird and listen and watch them while they're. They're singing.
Speaker B
Yep, that's exactly right. All right, so the next sound that we're gonna cover is a call. And it is, it's called their seat.
Speaker A
And.
Speaker B
And it's a contact call. Sometimes I think it's used as like a nocturnal migration call. But the reason why we're going to talk about it is because it happens to be an example of an under slurred sound. Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, it's almost too fast to tell. It can sound. It doesn't necessarily sound under slurred, so. So you have to listen really closely to hear it. It's very easy to see that it's under slurred if you, if you visualize the sound. So let's listen to their seat call.
Speaker A
Okay. Yeah, I hear. But my brain's like, that's kind of like a wavering, not so much like a dipping because it's going so fast.
Speaker B
Yeah. But if you listen and, and we'll listen to it again in a sec, it kind of ends where it started. So it, it does have this wavering pattern to it that it's like you can kind of tell that it's changing in pitch, but it ends up where it started. Yeah. And if I listen, if I'm not listening closely, like if we hadn't just done this whole explanation ahead of time and, you know, very closely listening to try to hear my brain will just turn it into like a monotone call. If I, if I, like, relax a little bit and I'm paying less attention, all of a sudden it turns into just a flat monotone call.
Speaker A
We play it one more time. Yeah, I, I feel like. I feel like that slight wavering. I can catch that. It just. I wouldn't have put it together as Like a U shape if we hadn't discussed this, but I think I'll be able to recognize it better now. And it's not like a clean, you know, single note.
Speaker B
Yeah. And honestly, over the course of time, we'll cover better examples of under slurred sounds. We just wanted to introduce that vocabulary for this week.
Speaker A
Cool.
Speaker B
The last sound we're going to listen to is their most common and most distinctive call. It's called their vimp. It's husky. It can sound polyphonic. Not the metallic kind of polyphonic, but the whiny kind of polyphonic. So let's listen to that and then we'll talk about it.
Speaker A
I even hear them saying wimp. It's aptly named. Yeah, it sounds like.
Speaker B
Let me listen one more time. I guess I do. Now that you did that, you're welcome. I don't know that I would have prior to you.
Speaker A
Now when you hear them saying vimp, you'll know.
Speaker B
Yeah. So, yeah, that's their vimp call again. It's their most distinctive, probably the most useful for trying to figure out, is that a song sparrow?
Speaker A
That's usually when they're hopping around in the bushes and you're like, what is that? I gotta get a good look. And they're like, vmp. Vamp. Vampire.
Speaker B
Yep.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Cool.
Speaker B
All right, so thank you so much. It's been, like we said earlier, it's been really fun to watch the. The podcast grow in popularity, and we're really excited to be doing more episodes and to continue that moving forward.
Speaker A
Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us in this journey of birding, and we hope that you have a great week.
Speaker B
Sam.