1454 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 part 3 



Air Force, we had an audiospectrograph made. This gives a visual 

 picture of the song with time as the horizontal axis and frequency 

 of the notes on the vertical scale. 



The audiospectograph showed that there were six "churrs," seven 

 "wees" and two final "wahs," rather than the three, three, and one we 

 thought we heard, and also a longish "taa" note between the churrs 

 and wees that we missed. The audiospectograph further showed that 

 all the notes were far from simple but had introductory grace notes 

 and various harmonics. The song was about two seconds in length, 

 about as long as it takes to say "churr-churr-churr-taa-wee-wee-wee- 

 wah." This transliteration gives us the best picture of what the 

 Lincoln's sparrow says. We must remember that the reaction time 

 of small birds is about twice as fast as ours, so it gets in two notes 

 n^hile we register one. On May 23, 1956, one bird sang a song which 

 steadily rose in pitch, transliterated as "chiur-churr-churr-wah-wah- 

 wah-wee?" Another variation heard at Dorion June 12, 1956, we 

 transliterated as "cheer-cheer-cheer- wah-wah-titi-wah-tsidlee-wah." 

 In 1957 we added mourning warbler to the list of birds whose songs 

 were similar to that of Lincoln's sparrow, though more in quality 

 than in pattern in this case. 



Sometimes Lincoln's sparrow sings on the wing. On May 25, 1956, 

 at Grand view we saw one launch forth from a perch about 10 feet up 

 a little birch and sing as it flew on fluttering Avings some 12 feet above 

 the ground, in an arc of about 50 feet. The flight song was introduced 

 by a series of high, excited "tic" notes, and we transliterated it as 

 "tic-tic-tic-churr-chiur-chuiT-wee-wee-wee-wah." This bird had just 

 returned from a chase involving a neighboring Lincoln's sparrow on 

 the border of the adjacent territory. 



Another flight song we heard at Dorion appeared to be caused by 

 our shaking some branches of a brushpile in which we suspected the 

 bird might have a nest. Still another flight song apparently was 

 stimulated by courtship excitement; on June 9, 1956, after pouncing 

 on the female and mating with her in the grass, the male flew toward 

 us on quivering wings in slightly rising flight for about 50 feet, singing 

 his normal song as he flew. 



We made several counts of song frequency at Dorion and found 

 three or four songs per minute usual during an active singing period, 

 very rarely five songs per minute. Frequencies less than three per 

 minute were usually correlated with change in singing position, which 

 is not infrequent. Birds often sang from the ground while foraging. 

 Song perches above the ground have been noted in low evergreens, 

 tops of stumps, once on a branch about 20 feet up in a dead Jack pine, 

 once on an overhead power wire (two unusually conspicuous perches), 

 and most commonly in alders, willows, and birches from 4 to 8 feet 



