A Distinctive Song Pattern in Gambel's White-Crowned Sparrow

Abstract

The purpose of this communication is to report a distinctive song pattern of Gambel's Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii) recorded in southern Alaska during the summer of 1967. It is well known that the songs of White-crowned Sparrows breeding in different localities differ in pattern, or dialect. Banks (Univ. Calif. Publ. Zoil. 70:1-123, 1964) reviews references in the literature to geographic variations in White-crowned Sparrow songs. Marler and Tamura (Science 146:1483-1486, 1964) found that the dialect patterns of males of the permanently resident Nuttall's White-crowned Sparrow (Z. 1. nuttalli) develop through learning from older birds in the first month or two of life. If gambelii is similar to nuttalli in this respect, the songs described below represent local dialects characteristic of specific breeding populations. Also, the song pattern of a given individual should, once it achieves adult form, be constant throughout life, whether uttered on the breeding grounds, in migration, or on the wintering grounds. A year ago, with support from the Institute of Arctic Biology and the Arctic Institute of North America, we began a study of variation in song pattern in the Gambel's Sparrow. To date one of us (Leonard Peyton) has tape-recorded the songs of this race in early summer in Alaska at College, Gulkana, Glennallen, Anchorage, Skilak Lake, and Kenai Lake. The other author (Barbara DeWolfe) recorded songs in fall, winter, and early spring at Santa Barbara, California, and during spring migration at Watson Lake, Yukon Territory. Sonagrams of the recordings were made, and analysis of the variations in song patterns is under way. The birds near Anchorage, and at Skilak Lake and Kenai Lake on the Kenai Peninsula, uttered songs that are similar to each other in basic pattern and that differ from all songs of Gambel's Sparrows we have heard or recorded elsewhere. At this early stage of our study we do not know how localized this distinctive pattern is. We describe it below in hopes that, once ornithologists are alerted to its existence, this same pattern may be detected either at other points in the vast breeding range of this race or, even better, on migration routes or in the wintering range. Fortunately, the pattern is sufficiently distinctive to be recognizable with the unaided ear. ---1-..-. ---2--3 4-4-56-