Brewer's Sparrow, Sageland Singer

BirdNote^®

Brewer’s Sparrow, Sagelands Singer

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[Long song of the Brewer’s Sparrow]
Every spring, one of the most musical and complex bird songs on the continent, that of the Brewer’s Sparrow, rings forth from the sagebrush of Washington’s Columbia Basin.
The Brewer’s Sparrow, a migratory songbird that winters mostly in western Mexico, returns in April to the sage. Sagebrush habitat, often called shrub-steppe, is an ever-diminishing natural habitat of the interior west as it is cleared for irrigated crops.
The diminutive Brewer’s Sparrow shares its nesting habitat with other fancy singers like the long-winded Sage Thrasher and the melodic Vesper Sparrow. All three of these sage-nesters are sandy brown in color, blending so cryptically with their surroundings that only a very sharp eye discerns them as they sing unstintingly among the shrubby sage plants. Yet even among this accomplished company, the Brewer’s song stands apart—if most birds offer a song, the Brewer’s Sparrow seems to perform an entire aria.
[Song of the Brewer’s Sparrow]
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Written by Bob Sundstrom
Song of the Brewer’s Sparrow provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by G.A. Keller.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2012 Tune In to Nature.org     June 2012     Narrator: Frank Corrado

ID#060705BRSPKPLU            BRSP-01-2009-06-06-