Editing Song sparrow (section)

==Song==
[[File:Melospiza melodia -Battery Park, New Castle, Delaware, USA -singing-8.jpg|thumb|right|A song sparrow singing in [[Delaware]], USA]]
The sparrow species derives its name from its colorful repertoire of songs. Enthusiasts report that one of the songs heard often in suburban locations closely resembles the opening four notes of [[Ludwig van Beethoven]]'s [[Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)|Symphony No. 5]]. The male uses a fairly complex song to declare ownership of its territory and attract females.

Singing itself consists of a combination of repeated notes, quickly passing isolated notes, and trills. The songs are very crisp, clear, and precise, making them easily distinguishable by human ears. A particular song is determined by not only pitch and rhythm but also the timbre of the trills. Although one bird will know many songs—as many as 20 different tunes with as many as 1000 improvised variations on the basic theme,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Nichols |first=John T. |date=1 July 1924 |title=The Song of the Song Sparrow. (A Systematic Study of Its Construction) |journal=The Auk |volume=41 |issue=3 |pages=444–451 |doi=10.2307/4074494|jstor=4074494 |doi-access=free }}</ref>—unlike [[thrush (bird)|thrushes]], the song sparrow usually repeats the same song many times before switching to a different song.

Song sparrows typically learn their songs from a handful of other birds that have neighboring territories. They are most likely to learn songs that are shared between these neighbors. Ultimately, they will choose a territory close to or replacing the birds that they have learned from. This allows the song sparrows to address their neighbors with songs shared with those neighbors. It has been demonstrated that song sparrows are able to distinguish neighbors from strangers on the basis of song, and also that females are able to distinguish (and prefer) their mate's songs from those of other neighboring birds, and they prefer songs of neighboring birds to those of strangers.<ref name="mateneighbour"/>

A 2022 study by Duke University also found that male song sparrows memorize a 30-minute long playlist of their songs and use that information to curate both their current playlist and the following one. The findings suggest that male song sparrows deliberately shuffle and repeat their songs possibly to keep a female's attention.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Searcy|first1=William A.|last2=Soha|first2=Jill|last3=Peters|first3=Susan|last4=Nowicki|first4=Stephen|date=2022-01-26|title=Long-distance dependencies in birdsong syntax|journal=Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences|volume=289|issue=1967|pages=20212473|doi=10.1098/rspb.2021.2473|pmc=8790354|pmid=35078357}}</ref>