I saw this beautiful White-Throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) on a rainy December day at Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge, one of my favorite places in Indiana. A picturesque swamp nestled in the rolling hills of the southern part of the state, it never disappoints.
With many birds, it’s easy to distinguish if they are male or female at a glance due to their sexually dichromatic characteristics- that is, that males and females within a species have different colors. There are tons of examples of this, like the Red-Winged Blackbird: All of those ubiquitous black birds with their red patches are adult males, while females (and juveniles) are entirely distinct and often confused for totally different birds. There are generally behavioral differences as well, especially in regards to nesting and defending of territory.
The White-Throated Sparrow doesn’t quite fit the mold- in fact, it makes its own, and separates out these components that we otherwise see together. This article from Scientific American explains the science way better than I can, but essentially these sparrows maintain the dichromatic presentation and behaviors, but have divorced it from sexual characteristics.
The strategy looks pretty standard at first. The birds with bright white stripes tend to be more aggressive and stereotypically male, while the birds with muted tan stripes are more subdued and stereotypically female. Breeding birds will seek a partner with the opposite characteristics. So far, so good, right? But it really confused researchers at first to see a white-striped bird lay an egg in one nest, and a brown-striped in another; eventually they figured out that a sparrow could be bright and bold and female, and vice versa. Just another example of Nature’s stunning beauty and diversity.
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