The white-throated sparrow has a call of O-Canada-Canada-Canada-Canada. Are there any other birds that have a similar call with a different regional dialect?
There do not appear to be any other birds with a dialect like the white-throat. A dialect occurs when the songs of males in one area share features that make the songs distinct from those of males in other areas.
A dialect may form if the young of one species imitate the songs they hear after they hatch, then settle to breed in an area close by. Since species vary in how accurately they learn their songs and how far they move to breed, dialects don’t develop in all of them.
So if a shortened version of the white-throat call is not a dialect, what are you hearing? The white-throat may be announcing his presence to females, but singing only the first two notes of his song, since, without other males around to make him feel threatened, he isn’t motivated to sing the whole thing (smacks of slacker boyfriend to us). Or, he may have begun the whole song, but stopped when interrupted by another Romeo. A third possibility is that the individual has an atypical song. Sometimes birds just don’t learn to sing properly. There’s yet another explanation: You may be hearing a different bird. The black-capped chickadee’s whistled call, for example, sounds a lot like the white-throated sparrow’s intro notes.
