Songbirds all In one place

IN THE early morning hours I was awakened by sounds strange to my critified ears. Songbirds indeed!


Strange but lovely. It was of birds singing not just one or two but many. Many birds. Some nearby others more distant and all of them singing. As I lay in bed and listened,a growing wonder came over me I got up and went to the window, opened it and got down on my knees with my elbows resting on the sill.
Much nearer now, I heard the volume swell until it seemed that all outdoors was alive with music. Many songbirds with their many individual song but all blending in one grand chorus.


I ignored the chill in the air. I was enthralled.

The foregoing was experienced by a man from New York City  who was visiting friends in North York Shire England. Their home was surrounded by open fields and woodlands and birds. When he greeted his host and hostess that morning he was exuberant. They explained to him that he had just been exposed to the ' dawn chorus' . It happens every spring and into midsummer. There is also an ' evening chorus. ' More subdued, but still impressive. In many parts of the world, these performances are becoming rare; in other areas they have ceased altogether.

There are some 9,000 known species of birds, about 5,000 of which are classed as songbirds, of the suborder Oscines.


While some females sing, it is the males that put on these morning and evening musical extravaganzas. We are told that they are singing to hold territory and secure mates, but it's also just possible that they enjoy making music. Certainly, when the drawn chorus builds to its climax and continues unabated for 30 minutes, the singers do seem to reach festive Heights.

Songs Of Great Variety

The song vary from simple to complex to elaborate. The white-crowned sparrow seems content with one simple song, repeated endlessly. The song sparrow has a larger repertoire, wrens have hundreds, and mockingbirds can go on for hours with their melodious outpourings. For share number of songs,  however, the brown thrasher is credited with over 2,000. Nightingales, thrushes, thrashers, finches, robins, meadowlark, blackbirds, warblers, cardinals, superb lyre birds, robin chats, skylarks, and many others from all parts of the earth can claim fame as virtuoso performers.

In addition to the primary songs of the dawn and evening choruses, there are others. Of special interest are the "whisper" songs, subdued renderings of snatches of primarily songs, with variations and addictions and audible only a few yards away. Often sung while the birds are sitting on the nest incubating eggs or hidden away in the privacy of dense underbrush, these little muted songs sung by both male and female may reflect a quite contentment.

The mated pairs of many species of birds sing duets. Together, they may sing the same song, alternatively different parts of the same song. They do it so perfectly timed that it sounds as if just one bird were singing. The interval between when one stops and the other starts is measured in milli-seconds. The only way to be sure that two singers, not just one, are involved is to stand between them. In South America outstanding duettists are the musician wrens, considered by many to sing the most beautiful songs heard in the forests there.

Shameless Plagiarism

Vocal mimicry is a favorite practice of several species. Ornithologists refer to it as a puzzling phenomenon and fail to see that it serves any function, although one researcher suggested that the birds were just playing. In North America the mockingbird excels at it. Its scientific name MIMUS POLYGLOTTUS means " many tongued mimic." In just an hour's singing, one reportedly imitated 55 species of birds.

But the mockingbird holds no monopoly on mimicry. In Australia the superb lyrebird has "one of the most powerful and melodious of all bird songs," yet "to his own song he adds those of nearly every species living nearby." Robert Burton, in bird behavior reports on the mimicry of bowerbirds, marsh warblers, and canaries. The Australian bowerbirds "have been recorded as imitating cats, dogs, axes chopping wood, motorcar horns and fence wires twanging, as well as many kinds of birds. One bowerbird is said to have mimicked an eagle so well that it caused a hen and her chicks to run for cover." Certainly, these bowerbird were not singing to mate with axes chopping wood or to chase twanging fence wires from their territory! Perhaps they were just having fun, as were the people listening to them.

The marsh warbler of Europe pilfers so much from others that "the full range of its Plagiarism was only realized through a study made in Belgium. Analysis of sonograms revealed that probably the entire repertoire was up of mimicry. Not only were the songs of nearly a hundred European species recognized in the sonograms but also those of over a hundred African species, which the marsh warbler would hear in its winter quarters. "

Canaries" are undiscriminating and will copy anything, which makes them so popular as cage - birds. There is the famous example, from the early 1900s, of the Eurasian bullfinch which had been taught to whistle "God save the king". A canary in the next room learnt the tune over the course of a year and, when the bullfinch hesitated too long at the end of the third line, the canary would chime in and finish the tune. "

The different species have definite preferences when it comes to platforms from which they will offer their renditions. Some sing from the ground, others from tips of weeds, others from an exposed perch at the top of a tree. Mockingbirds choose such exposed places high up and from time to time launch themselves into the air 10 or 20 feet and drop down to their perches again, singing all the while. Birds that nest in open fields often sing in flight while soaring over their territories. This is the case with the skylark, as shown by the poet Shelley in his beautiful "Ode to a Skylark", in which he speaks of this "blithe spirit" soaring high and pouring forth its heart "in profuse strains of unpremeditated art" .

Spring and early summer is the time for the drawn and evening choruses. Many birds, however, will continue to sing after spring and summer, after mating and nesting activities have ceased.

One writer says that much about birdsong is puzzling, and "the greatest mystery is why these elaborate outpourings should have evolved in the first place," so "unnecessarily elaborate for any likely function." Mockingbirds and some others often sing in the night. Who is to say that it is not for their own enjoyment and ours.

How They Do It Continuing Mystery

The greatest "mystery" may not be why they sing such elaborate songs; it may be how they do it. There have been different theories, and even now after intensive scientific investigation, there is no unanimous agreement. The bird's voice box is called the syrinx a bony, box like resonating chamber with elastic membranes controlled by special muscles. It varies greatly in different species, its most complex form being found in the songbirds. It is located at the lower end of the trachea, or windpipe, and has two separate sound sources. Each sound source has its own set of nerves, muscles and membranes, which is why songbirds are said to have ' two voices. ' By alternating muscular tension on the membranes and changing the air pressure, the bird varies volume as well as pitch. Birds with the most syringeal muscles have the greatest potential for producing different complex songs or calls. Well, songbirds are great indeed. 

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