By Joan Collins
The Lincoln’s sparrow, a small, secretive chicken with a stunning voice, is one in every of two boreal chicken species within the Adirondacks that nest primarily in bogs. (The different being the palm warbler.)
On a visit to Quebec in 1833, John James Audubon gushed concerning the “sweet notes” of a brand new species he had found that surpassed any American finch species’ music. Thomas Lincoln, one in every of his young companions on the journey, shot one of many birds, buying the primary specimen. Before the appearance of conservation, the early ornithologists carried weapons, not binoculars. Audubon subsequently named the chicken “Lincoln’s finch” in his honor.
Its breeding grounds span from Alaska throughout Canada to Newfoundland, and south into western parts of the U.S. and northern areas of the higher Midwest and northeastern states bordering Canada. The Adirondack area is the southern fringe of its breeding vary. The winter vary consists of the western and southern U.S, Mexico and Central America. It nests primarily in bogs of the Adirondacks, however I’ve often discovered them nesting in marsh edges and moist fields.
As with many different species in its household, Lincoln’s sparrow has dark-streaked pale brown upperparts, permitting it to mix into its ground-dwelling habitat. It is pale beneath with a buffy breast that’s marked with delicate black streaks. The edges of its wings and tail feathers are reddish. It has a particular grey supercilium and a slim, buffy eye-ring.
They nest in a despair of moss on the bottom with dense shrub cowl typically discovered on the base of small black spruce or tamarack timber scattered within the bogs. Their clutch measurement averages 4 eggs. Females keep hidden and scoot like mice in vegetation tunnels resulting in their nests. Males sing from open perches in shrubs or timber.
And what a voice! I discover the Lincoln’s sparrow’s music to be charming. It has been described as “rich, warbling and wrenlike.” Possibly distinctive amongst new world sparrows, its music has polyphonic phrases. It makes use of either side of its syrinx, a novel voice field buried deep inside a chicken’s chest, to supply two completely different sounds without delay. To stand subsequent to a singing Lincoln’s sparrow is a musical thrill in your ears.
Insects, spiders and seeds make up most of their food regimen on the breeding grounds. In winter, they principally eat small seeds.
Lincoln’s sparrows face a number of threats, together with lack of shrubby habitat on their migration routes and winter grounds as a consequence of livestock overgrazing; window collisions; predation at nests; and they’re notably vulnerable to local weather change. Declines are already exhibiting up within the jap a part of their vary in North America the place they face extirpation from rising temperatures. Global warming will get rid of 75% of their breeding habitat if the anticipated improve within the Earth’s temperature of three levels Celsius by the tip of the century occurs. That would get rid of them from the U.S. and most of Canada.
In the present New York Breeding Bird Atlas III challenge, Lincoln’s sparrow is a precedence species with a worrisome decline in breeding confirmations. I’ve been observing a steep drop in numbers for a number of years, however notably this yr. While you’ll be able to nonetheless discover them in most Adirondack bogs, the numbers are manner down, and sometimes absent in smaller pockets of boggy habitat.
During the Adirondack Birding Festival, I lead an annual journey to Massawepie Mire, New York’s largest bathroom, the place we walk out on a powerful boardwalk into an enormous part of open peatland. Each yr, we hear numerous Lincoln’s sparrows singing round us whereas on the boardwalk platform with many nice views by means of my scope and contributors’ binoculars.
But this yr, just one distant chicken sang, too far-off to see. It was heartbreaking. I typically assume the consequences of local weather change shall be linear, however discover they’re principally abrupt.
I hope readers delight within the “sweet notes” of the Lincoln’s sparrow’s music earlier than they disappear from our Adirondack panorama.
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