5:30 a.m. 62 degrees, wind ENE 1 mph. Sky: heavily mottled with thin pink wash across the south. Permanent streams: languid. Wetlands: lush and quiet. Pond: trace of mist rolls east; for the moment, the surface unblemished; then a snapping turtle, an antediluvian thug the size of my kitchen sink, rises and sculls, head like a broken limb, carapace, crenulated and spiked, on loan from Island of the Burning Damned. Sees me. Sinks like a stone. A great blue heron flies in from the wetlands, its feet trailing behind. Circles the pond, neck unfurling. Ready to land. Sees me. Chucks a U-ey.
Tanager amps up. Warblers shut volume down, apparently no need to broadcast; just lone chestnut-side and two ovenbirds. April flash: full junco trill, a chickadee whistles, and the rising nasal notes of a white-breasted nuthatch's, nearly as monotonous (though not as standard) as red-eyed vireo.
A paper published recently in Current Biology tracks the cultural evolution of the song of white-throated sparrows, the iconic Old Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody, which has morphed its syncopation from triplet to doublet Old Sam Peabuh, Peabuh, Peabuh. The authors noted that in 2004 half the sparrows in Alberta sang the newer version; by 2014, all sparrows from the Yukon to Ottawa sang the short version. Now, like Beatles' songs arriving from England and changing the direction of American rock-and-roll, the white-throated sparrow's doublet has spread east into northern New England, has the potential to become a chart-topping hit. White-throated sparrows from the Northwest and the Northeast mingle on the wintering grounds, where males sing before migration, the song has been passed along. It's kind of like an Australian . . . coming to New York, one of the authors told The New York Times, and . . . New Yorkers start suddenly to adopt an Australian Accent.
Why? Maybe lady sparrows like a novelty.
I stand by the pond, listening to the epochal song of a white-throated sparrow, the dogs capitulate without resistance. The lure of a bird’s song drifts across the water, over a sunken turtle, over inert dogs. A beacon of sound on a crisp mid-July morning. Do I hear peabuh, peabuh, peabuh? Who knows?