White-throated sparrow

Every winter morning, at least two or three white-throated sparrows can be found picking through the undergrowth behind our house. In particularly cold weather, they puff up so much that they become nearly spherical, like little feathered tennis balls. Their song is one of my favorites. Lots of places online will stylize it as ‘O Sweet Canada’, but I’ve never liked that transcription; to me it’s clearer and more haunting than that, a little mournful, a bit like a clarinet playing a bar of an elegiac song.