1310 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part s 



Puget Sound sparrow uses patterns reminiscent of the more complex 

 Nuttall's sparrow patterns, but pitched higher. Some of the racial 

 patterns are diagrammed in Peterson (1941); and Blanchard (1941) 

 shows diagrams for populational variations in Nuttall's sparrow and 

 the Puget Sound sparrow. 



Anne H. Wing, a trained musician with a keen sense of pitch, 

 studied the song of Gambel's sparrows at Johnson's Crossing, Yukon 

 Territory, in June and July of 1948 (in a Report on a Study of Arctic 

 Birds and Mammals, by Leonard Wing, 1948, manuscript for the 

 Research Report of the Arctic Institute of North America). Pier 

 comments and interpretations are those of a musician rather than a 

 biologist, and I include them along with her excellent musical descrip- 

 tion for, although I do not necessarily agree with all of them, they 

 represent a fresh and provocative approach to the study of song in 

 this species. Mrs. Wing (pers. comm., 1960) writes, in part: 



I found that the Gambel's sparrow sang melodious, high-pitched songs of 

 four beats in rapid march time. Stepping upward through the first three beats, 

 downward with the fourth, these decidedly rhythmic songs were clearly whistled 

 on the first two beats, burred on the third and fourth beats. Each song encom- 

 passed a range of pitch no greater than a "perfect fifth" interval, e.g., C to G 

 (do-sol). 



In its simplest form, the song contained four single notes. Any of the first 

 three beats, and most often the third, might contain not one note but two or three 

 shorter notes on the same pitch. The first beat, whether it contained one note 

 only or two or three notes of shorter duration, was on one pitch. Occasionally 

 in the third beat the short notes were successively a half-step higher. The fourth 

 beat was always a single note, and this was lower in pitch than the last and highest 

 pitch of the third beat. To put it simply, the melody marched quickly up a 

 little musical hill, then stepped down. 



In terms of the beats of the song, four beats of song were followed by ten beats 

 of rest or silence. During the rest period, another bird could and often did fit 

 its songs so as to achieve antiphony. Duetting was always in good musical taste, 

 both in rhythm and in melody. If one altered its song in detail, the other was 

 likely to do so as well, keeping the two songs in harmony. 



Responsive singing took place most commonly in the hours of singing at dawn, 

 when many birds seemed to congregate at different locations for the purpose of 

 singing. One of my favorite listening places was the shore of the Teslin River. 

 Wakened by the singing soon after midnight or at least by half-past twelve, 

 I would walk down the bank, notebook in hand. Sometimes several birds would 

 be singing the same tune in different keys, the songs overlapping in great con- 

 fusion. This would soon resolve, perhaps as more birds arrived, into question 

 and answer singing. Around three or three-thirty most of the birds had dropped 

 out, their voices heard, perhaps, on the hillside where there were nests. 



Musical replies to musical questions were definitely melodious by the highest 

 standards of human musicians. The duets might be arbitrarily classified as, 

 first, variations on a theme, and, second, mutually complementary songs, one 

 the more obviously a completion of the other. To illustrate, (using letter names 

 of scale tones and recalling that the songs rose through three beats, falling on the 

 last) the singing of the song 'B flat, C, D-D, B flat' in alternation with the song 



