White Crowned Sparrows Sing the Sad Song of Winter

By Mel Carriere

Note:  This article was originally published on Bubblews, but with the decline of that website I am gradually removing some of my more popular posts from there and posting them on my own site.  This was actually my most "liked" post on Bubblews, and I hope you enjoy it.

I always enjoy hearing the sad, wistful song of the White Crowned Sparrows in the tree tops during the fall and winter months in San Diego.  Being a letter carrier means being outside all day, of course, and if a mailman wants to he can really get in touch with nature.  I, for one, have learned to recognize the changes that come with the lengthening shadows and the crisp autumn air, and one of these changes is the plaintive, homesick call of the White-Crowns.

The White Crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) start singing here pretty much around the first of October.   They can be heard pining away for their homes with that sadly sweet whistle that seems as if it is echoing off the distant mountain peaks from whence they flew.  The Cornell Ornithology laboratory points out that some of these birds migrate 2,600 miles from Alaska to Southern California, sometimes flying 300 miles in a single night.  I believe this, because you can hear the icy clink of the glaciers in their protracted wail.  It is clear by their melancholy tone that they miss their homelands in the Northern Latitudes, and have only winged their way southward because the cold has made their lives in the northlands untenable.

Once in San Diego the White Crowns trade their lives in the Pine Tree ringed meadows of the North for our weedy, mustard clogged fields that are only sparsely shaded by the semi-tropical Eucalyptus.  Southern California’s  man made suburban thickets are poor substitutes for the tundra and high alpine meadows from whence they travel, but I for one am certainly glad they made the trip.

For me the song of the White Crowned Sparrow means that summer is over and autumn is now upon us.  It is almost as if the warm Santa Ana winds blow them in, but they bring the cool air of the north with them in their baggage and winter soon follows along in their wake.

I encourage all of you to go outside and listen for the natural sounds that adorn your neighborhoods during the changing of the seasons.  In our mechanized, automated society we no longer have to be in touch with nature to survive, and we often forget that there is a hidden, natural world that still exists parallel to our own, but as if it were located within a separate, unseen plane.  I depend upon the White Crowned Sparrow to remind me that this secret world still exists, and when I hear them singing their sad, lonely Winter’s song, the forgotten knowledge this sound stirs up never fails to thrill me.

Image from:  "White-crowned-Sparrow" by Wolfgang Wander - Own work / http://www.pbase.com/image/83910026. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White-crowned-Sparrow.jpg#mediaviewer/File:White-crowned-Sparrow.jpg