67. Recognizing individuals by their songs.
8. How Songs Change over Space and Time
Each individual has its own song
From page 140 in the book.
Recognizing individuals by their songs. The more you listen, the more you will hear, and often without really trying all that hard. To get to know individual birds by their songs, begin with the easier task of focusing on birds who have only one song in their repertoire (see pages 86-87 for lists of candidate species). Listen to song after song from one individual, coming to know the rhythm and overall quality, and especially coming to appreciate the range of variation within his song. Then listen to his neighbor, and you will often find something different that will enable you to tell the two birds apart. The challenge is far greater, of course, when the birds have learned their songs from each other, so that they sing almost identical songs from the same small or large dialect (e.g., some neighboring chipping sparrows, common yellowthroats, indigo buntings, pp. 56-58; or birds who belong to larger dialects, such as white-crowned sparrows and black-capped chickadees, p. 64). The challenge is also great with flycatchers, as songs vary less from individual to individual than they do in the song-learning songbirds.