Shared Dialects

White-crowned sparrows, sister yards and common ground

White-crowned sparrow, pencil on plant print, 2025.

The white-crowned sparrows arrive in Southern California in January, flocking together to forage and rising in waves when you walk along the edges of the chaparral. Their feathers are as cryptic as any other little brown job moving through the bush and I never seem to mark the moment they have arrived. Yet, at some point, I find myself scanning my surroundings for a Cooper’s hawk in response to their chipping alarm call. Then I notice the smartly striped crowns of the males and realize that the days have started getting long and that winter is almost half over.

Gambel’s white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii) are the most common subspecies that descend into the scrub and grassy open spaces where I live, arriving from their breeding grounds in Alaska and Canada. And while it’s their alarm calls that I recognize most readily, their song is one that has been analyzed more deeply by scientists than perhaps of any other animal. They sing the song of home.

In the first few months of their lives, the males learn to sing from their surrounds. What they hear is what they learn and they carry their song for thousands of miles to their wintering grounds and return to sing near where they were raised. Because of this, white-crowned sparrows have regional dialects. Many songbirds have regional dialects, but the differences are more conspicuous and easier to delineate in white-crowned sparrows.

I’m terrible at identifying birds by their songs and doubt I’d ever notice that my sparrows had an accent, but I suspect a part of me knows. The white-crowned sparrows that congregate in my yard bring the sound of their home to mine. Perhaps my yard is a unique combination of dialects that I couldn’t hear anywhere else but at my own home. Or perhaps the white-crowned sparrows travel together and I have “sister yards” that share my soundscape.

I always wonder who has “my birds” when they aren’t with me. Perhaps right now, a middle-aged woman in Mexico is blowing steam off a cup of strong coffee while she ponders the same hooded orioles who spent the summer terrorizing my scrub jays and weaving palm frond nests. Are they gulping down winter berries while hanging from the branches in her yard? Has she offered them slices of newly ripened oranges, hoping they’ll linger a while longer before heading north?

If I met her, perhaps we’d struggle with my bad Spanish if she didn’t speak English, but I know we would manage. Over bites of Mexican chocolate, grainy with sugar and sips of smoky mezcal, we would find a way to discover everything we had in common. What we shared would start with a smile over the sun flare wings of a migrant oriole, and from the there the list would grow. I just can’t image that the people who have “my birds” the other half of the year could be very much different from me.

In fact, perhaps what would serve me best these days is not imagining who “those people” are when I take in the news but instead imagining the people who share my favorite migratory birds with me. I know these people. They are real to me. They are my “sister yards” in far off places but we are all taking in the same joy. In fact, the white-crowned sparrows are starting to head to their spring homes now. So, Sister Yards be on the lookout. I’m sending my best wishes with them.