A few birds from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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White-crowned Sparrow:Uipinipaaq White-crowned Sparrow Ever heard the bird that sings, “Don’t wanna go to school no more”? If you haven’t, spring is the time of year to start listening. The male White-crowned sparrows return first, so that’s all you’ll be hearing or seeing for about two weeks, and since they sing even at night in Alaska, you’ll be happy when the females arrive and begin to settle in with their paramours. One of the reasons the females arrive later is that they winter further south in Mexico than the males. When the girls do arrive, they put on quite a display for the male, especially in a nesting territory where there aren’t enough males to go around. This is referred to as polygyny, and happens in some human cultures, too. Sometimes among the White-crowns it gets so complicated that the females divide up the male’s territory and even sing to show possession of their little part of the realm. That seems to explain why the female does the courting, by fluttering her wings and trilling to attract the male’s attention. Sounds strange, but think of some of the things we humans do! Once the female has found a mate and a nesting territory, she sets about selecting a nest site, then building a cup-shaped nest on the ground by herself of materials such as grass, leaves and hair. This done, she begins the serious business of laying 4-5 brown-spotted creamy-white to pale-green eggs. Only she incubates the eggs, which hatch about 12 days later. Both parents feed the young in the nest until they fledge after about 10 days. If there is enough time left in the season and the female decides to try for a second brood, the male will continue feeding the fledglings until they are on their own. While the adults feed mostly on wildflower and grass seeds and some insects, they feed their young a high protein diet of mostly insects. The Yupik name Uipinipaaq is probably onomatopoeic, that is, it sounds similar to the bird’s song. This is not the case for either the common name (perfectly descriptive) or the scientific (Greek) name, Zonotrichia leucophrys, which loosely means, “white striped feathers over the eyebrow.” Which leads me into a short discussion about their white crowns. Researchers refer to these white crowns as badges, and have shown that they indicate relative status among adult male and female birds, those with the brightest white striping having the highest dominance status. This is apparently important in finding genetically worthy mates, not unlike the role of hair in humans, although there’s no guarantee of the genetic quality in the latter. Something else fairly unique among these sparrows is that they have many local dialects. These have also been widely studied by scientists, but have not been found to have any evolutionary significance. They have arisen simply as a result of the young males (and females) hearing the songs sung in their local territories by their fathers and neighboring males. “Don’t wanna go to school no more!”  |
