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Hi Everyone,
I would like to take a moment to thank all
the very knowledgeable people from various parts of Utah for taking the time to
explain to me why the spotted towhee I saw yesterday didn't sound like my
recordings.
The summation of the replies I received
boils down to a dialect. Prior to yesterday's SPOTTED TOWHEE, I was well
aware of a dialect thing happeing with NORTHERN CARDINALS. I lived most of
my life in a suburb south of Chicago, then two years in Ithaca, NY and then 15
months in TX, all of these locations had many No. CARDINALS, none of them
sounded remotely similar from location to location. I have learned that
the same holds true with TOWHEES and probably many other birds. From
now on I will always make sure I when I hear a singing bird to make every
effort possible to get a visual on him before I quickly make an identification
by song only. CD recordings can be an aid in identification, but one can
always get a positive by viewing them through binocs.
Thanks again,
Jill Wood
PS: When I found I was moving to UT, I
was very pleased to discover that there aren't any No. Cardinals here, I just
didn't want to try and learn yet another dialect for them.
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"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." - John Muir |