By Kathryn True

This fall as I walked down my street with a visiting nature-loving friend from Seattle, she suddenly asked, “What’s that?” We both stopped, delighted by an unusually loud and spring-like bird song, emanating from the forest across from my driveway on the North End. Thanks to islander Steve Caldwell’s keen ear and instruction in birding-by-ear classes, I’ve learned a number of local bird songs and calls. And though by no means an expert, I generally know when something I hear is out of place, and this was definitely different. If it were May, I would have guessed it was one of the ever-elusive warblers that seem to delight in thwarting my best song-identification efforts, but this was October…

I remembered to pull out my phone and record the call that had piqued our curiosity.

I sent the recording to a couple of experts, and had not yet heard back when I ran into Ed Swan outside the Vashon Library. Our island bird guru moved to West Seattle last year, but he still frequents the island and continues to serve as the main collector of island bird records. (His seasonal bird notes appear on Vashon Nature Center’s Facebook group page.) I was still pondering the puzzling song and asked Ed if he had time to listen to it. He held my phone to his ear and focused intently, then said, “Fox Sparrow.” These ground feeders are known for kicking up leaves and other litter as they forage for insects and spiders. Like towhees, they use both feet simultaneously to put on what can be a dance-like food collection display.

Ed explained that though two sub-species of Fox Sparrows breed in Washington, only the Sooty Fox Sparrow occurs on the island. Our island “Sooties” likely migrate here from nesting grounds in coastal British Columbia including Vancouver Island and the sea stacks of the outer coast. On Vashon, you can sometimes hear them sing in April before they leave to breed, and in October when they have just returned. They generally stop singing for the remainder of their island winter. Fox sparrows are not an unusual island bird, it’s just less common to hear their song here.

For me, migration is one of those “staring at the stars” mysteries—too marvelously complex to wrap my mind around. The Sooty Fox Sparrow’s coastal Canada nest sites brought to mind the dramatic sojourn of the Marbled Murrelet, from old-growth forest treetops to oceans. Can you imagine jumping out of a tree hundreds of feet in the air—your life depending on a successful first flight to a sea or lake up to 20 miles away? And we think human parenting is difficult! (Read about murrelets found foraging off Maury shores during our 2015 BioBlitz.)

Thinking of the Fox Sparrow’s chicks soothed by lullabies of ocean waves and gull cries, growing plump on salty beetles and sand fleas, put me in awe of this migration story sung to life in the forest behind my mailbox. An unusual bird melody sparked new wonder about what can be an easily overlooked bird—and gratefulness for the incredible stores of natural history wisdom we have on the island. Thanks, Ed and Steve!

 “At all hours of the day, in every kind of weather late into the brief summer, its voice rises among the evergreen woods filling the air with quivering, delicious melody, which at length dies softly, mingling with the soughing of the wind in the spruces, or drowned by the muffled roar of the surf beating against neighboring cliffs.”

—The nineteenth century naturalist William Brewster describing the rich song of breeding Fox Sparrows in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

For bird tours and more visit: www.theswancompany.com