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The fascinating and complicated sex lives of white-throated sparrows

With their quadruple personalities, those little brown birds at your feeder are a lot more interesting than they might appear.

As late as 1947, in his classic Field Guide to the Birds, Roger Peterson described the adult’s “striped black and white crown” and said the immature was “duller, but with the same essential recognition-marks.” By that time, there’d been hints already that the colors might not be just a function of age. For many years, Falls and his students at the University of Toronto carried out highly detailed studies of White-throated Sparrows, showing how behavioral differences between the morphs touched every aspect of these birds’ lives. They all sing variations of the whistled Oh, sweet, Kimberly-Kimberly-Kimberly!, but the songs of tan-striped birds average slightly lower-pitched, and these lower sounds may carry better through dense habitat.

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