The White-Throated Sparrow {ZonotricUa aibicoius) 



By Edward B. Clark 



Length: 6^ inches. 



Range: North America, east of the Rocky Mountains. 



One of the handsomest of our sparrows. 



In the shelter of the country thickets and of the city park bushes in late 

 April and early May the white-throated sparrows are found. Then they drop 

 down at sunrise from their night journey ings to rest, to glean the seeds and 

 perhaps to sing. 



The Spring Whitethroat is bound for his northern summer home in the 

 land of the balsam forests. If he consents to sing while exercising his stop-over 

 privilege, the song carries us to the camping ground under the trees that shadow 

 the spring-fed streams, and thought comes of the coolness and the clarity of 

 far northern summer days. 



The Whitethroat on his summer journey ings passes unnoticed of the people, 

 but he deserves the attention which he doesn't get. He dresses soberly in ash 

 gray, white and brown, with a crown of black divided in its center by a narrow 

 strip of white. The bird gets its name from its snow-white square throat patch. 



The Whitethroat has small place in literature, but he has found his way 

 into the heart of the woodsman, and with that, probably, the bird is content, for 

 he makes the woodsman his close companion during the months of his stay in 

 the wilderness. 



The books have attempted to reproduce the song of the Whitethroat in 

 words, and the books have failed. In one place we read that the sweet and at 

 times almost ecstatic song of the bird is but an effort to repeat "Old Sam Peabody. 

 Peabody, Peabody," and in another place we read that the Whitethroat is advis- 

 ing the farmer thus : "Sow wheat, Peeverly, Peeverly, Peeverly." This reduc- 

 tion of the song to words brings it down to absurdity. Neither the fame of 

 the philanthropist Peabody nor the industry of the farmer Peeverly can justify 

 the coupling of their names with the pure music of this white-throated bird of 

 the wilderness. 



The notes have in them something of the song of the stream and something 

 of the whisper of the trees. They are clear and true at all times. The song' 

 may lack the spiritual quality of the notes of the bird's wilderness companion, 

 the hermit thrush, but it is a happier song, as the Whitethroat seemingly is happier 

 than its shy hermit friend. 



Some day one of the poets will wander into the wilderness and will hear 

 the Whitethroat sing, and then if the song doesn't move responsive song the poet 

 is no true singer. The Whitethroat is a confiding bird. It will come to the en- 

 trance of the camper's hut and tell him in song of the wife and the household on 

 the ground, or in the low brush where the raspberries grow in the clearing. He 



336 



