Nick,

Is the second note lower than the first?

A White-crowned could be characterized as a six note song. I'll use "high"
for the first note and "low" for lower notes:

"High........low..high, high, low....low(trailing off)...."

Your ending of trrr, rrrr still sounds to me like a Song Sparrow



Happy Birding!

Calvin Gehlen
Vancouver, BC
calvin at GoBirding.com
It's time to go birding at www.GoBirding.com


-----Original Message-----
From: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu
[mailto:TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu]On Behalf Of NJPharris at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 9:30 AM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: Birding by Ear

Hey, all you birders by ear out there, maybe you can help me with this
one...

There is something outside my office window that sings a very distinctive
song all day, but I can't think what it is--probably a House Sparrow or
something else really common and/or non-native :-P.

Anyway, the song goes something like "Haw, hee, chewy, chewy, trrrrr". For
those of you with a musical frame of mind like mine, the song sounds like it
is in a fairly slow four beat (I'll mark the beats with |'s):

|Haw |Hee-chewy |Chewy-trr |rrrr

[Haw = quarter note; hee = eighth note; chewy = 2 sixteenth notes; trr =
eighth note; rrrr = trailing off through last beat]

I hope that makes some sense to someone out there! Now, what is that bird?

Nick Pharris
Olympia, WA
NJPharris at aol.com