ADAPTABLE SONG SPARROWS

      Song sparrows are bold in plumage and song, making them noticeable, though they are well camouflaged and live among overgrown thickets of shrubbery and vines.  Their feathering is light, brownish-gray, with heavy, black streaking all over.  And their piping songs are heard as early as warm afternoons in February.  Those lovely, lilting songs, alone, give away their presence among thickets.  

     The attractive song sparrows are permanent residents wherever they live.  They don't migrate.  

     And song sparrows are adaptable, living in thickets on older, human-made lawns, and along woods, hedgerows, railways, and waterways and impoundments.  They are, therefore, common across much of North America; as a variety of subspecies adapted to various habitats.  They are the most widespread species of sparrow on this continent.  And if other kinds of sparrows were to become extinct, song sparrows would fill each one's niche, from salt marshes to woodland edges.   

     But I think thickets and weeds along the shores of streams and ponds in the eastern United States are the most interesting of the adaptable song sparrows' habitats.  There they are still sparrows, hiding in shrubbery and eating invertebrates and seeds from nearby weeds and tall grasses, and feeding the same foods to their young in their nests.  

     But there, too, song sparrows play the role of smaller kinds of sandpipers, where those genuine shorebirds don't venture.  The sparrows move about on the narrow, bare mud flats, under shrubbery, along smaller waterways and impoundments, and consume seeds on the mud, and ingest invertebrates in the mud, as sandpipers do.  

     Song sparrows would be more adept at getting invertebrates in the mud if they had longer beaks, as sandpipers do.  Perhaps, in time, some song sparrows will develop a genetic code to grow longer bills, therefore being able to probe deeper in mud for invertebrates, and making a better living at it.     

     Sandpipers and sparrows are both wonderfully camouflaged on mud, making them invisible to predators until those little unrelated, shoreline birds move.  The adaptable song sparrows could eventually fit into the niche of some kinds of smaller sandpipers, as they could move into other sparrows' niches.  And this sparrows' adapting may not stop there!  

     Song sparrows are highly adaptable, little birds with a bright future.  They seem able to adjust to most any habitat, to their advantage.  Being adaptable is an important key to success.  And many other species of life are adaptable.    

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