Song sparrow / Singammer (Melospiza melodia)

Song sparrow at Vicky's mom's. 2023-10-11 14:10:08 New England NIKON D5600 ISO 3200
Exposure 0.002
Classification: Genus Melospiza; Family Passerellidae
I had distinct memories of reading about the song sparrow in the two major books I read about bird biology in general (U. Cornell) and about birdsong by Marler and Slabbekoorn. Once I realized I heard them every morning at my mother's house and thoroughly enjoyed them - in Europe no sparrow really sings in any serious manner - I had to go back to read about all the research into song sparrows in those two books.
Song: Nature's Music: the Science of Birdsong Peter Marler and Hans Slabbekoorn, 2004. In this study it was found that young song sparrows recognize both a typical sound type, a trill, and the temporal pattern of the song, whereas swamp sparrows only listen for the trill, having no complex song. [page 82: acoustic cues for species-selective song learning]
Ibid. The authors describe the singing with amusing terms, puff-sing-wave used to drive off a territorial intruder, and the aggressive 'zhee' call used throughout the year to threaten other species or other song sparrows. [page 165]
Ibid. It was seen (by Hiebert et al in 1989) that song sparrows with a larger repertoire acquired a territory more quickly and survived longer. [page 48]
Ibid. It was seen that song sparrows matched the song repertoire of a neighbor to show that they were recognized. The authors (Beecher et al 1996) said that though not very aggressive, echoing the song of a neighbor's repertoire is more aggressive than singing a completely different song. [page 50]
Ibid. Another theory is that knowing all the songs of a neighbor means that it is sufficient to just responds those songs. If a bird has had to move to a more distant area or knows fewer songs himself, he may need to fight more often to prove the same point. [page 51-52]
Ibid. Young birds are said to learn songs from either one adult male after hatching, therefore in the area his parents did their breeding, or after migration the following spring, in which case it learns other songs from a male there. Dialects happen because birds tend to breed and therefore to sing in the same local area where they learned their songs. [page 115-116]
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Handbook of Bird Biology Edited by Irby J. Lovette and John W. Fitzpatrick, 2016. One study shows that birds under stress during song learning in early development produce poor quality songs with fewer copied notes. Females prefer songs learned with accuracy, so these poor stress-out kids are out of luck. [page 324]
Ibid. Beecher 2008 notes that song sparrows always learn an entire song and don't link two different songs; and that they tend to learn songs sung by many different males in their new neighbohood, making the song more useful to them. [page 375]
Ibid. Stoddard et all 1991 noted that though each song sparrow has a repertoire of 10 songs, the set of neighbors will have about 50 all in all, but each can recognize the individuals. As I understood from the discussion before that, the point is that each can recognize the other's voice if they both sing the same song [page 384]
Ibid. Here it's mentioned that birds with more songs in their repertoire live longer - whether song sparrows in North America or great tits, which live right by our home. [page 396]
Ibid. Some birds like white-crowned sparrows are "open ended learners", and could learn song sparrow songs but prefer those of their own species. These open ended learners continue to learn songs well into adulthood or even throughout their lives. [page 371]

Song: Automatically generated from Xeno-Canto recording.
Song attributes: Frequency:
Morning at Cherrywood Court - northern cardinal, gray catbirds, song sparrow. Cherrywood 2021-06-19 07:38:01 Singers: Northern cardinal, Grey catbird, Song sparrow

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First documented observation: 2021-06-13 in Cockeysville. Most recent observation: 2023-10-11 in New England.