Brewer's Sparrow Sounds

Overview
ID info
Life History
Maps
Sounds

Song (breweri)
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California, June 06, 1990Recorded by Randolph Little | Macaulay Library
Song (Timberline)
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Alaska, June 26, 1995Recorded by Gary Rosenberg | Macaulay Library
Song and calls (breweri)
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California, June 02, 1991Recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller | Macaulay Library
Calls (breweri)
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California, June 11, 2000Recorded by Laura Plice | Macaulay Library

Sounds provided by Macaulay Library.
Listen to more sounds of this species from the ML archive.

Songs

Male Brewer’s Sparrows sing dry, trilling songs that fall into two main types: long and short. Long songs last 10–15 seconds and consist of 5–10 distinct sections. They are quite complex—Roger Tory Peterson once likened it to “a Chipping Sparrow trying to sing like a canary.” Males sing long songs early in the breeding season when they are trying to attract mates, and generally stop singing the long versions when they have found a mate. After that they sing mostly short songs, which last 1.5 to 3 seconds and typically consist of 2 trilled sections, with the first usually being faster and higher pitched. Some elements of each song type are nearly identical to phrases sung by Clay-colored and Chipping Sparrows. Short songs continue throughout breeding, and sometimes even at night or on the wintering grounds. Songs differ somewhat in quality between the two subspecies, with the sagebrush subspecies being somewhat buzzier than the timberline form.

Calls

Call is a soft tsip or seep, similar to other Spizella sparrows. Females give soft twittering calls when soliciting courtship feeding or copulation from males.