Comments on: Over our heads

By: David Gorsline

David Gorsline — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:06:49 +0000

Andy Farnsworth at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is also studying flight calls.

By: I and the Bird # 48 at Greg Laden

I and the Bird # 48 at Greg Laden — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:07:03 +0000

[…] Over Our Heads on via negativa (weblog of Dave Bonta). This post is unmistakable given a centrally placed sonogram of a Canada warbler flight call, together with the total absence of any photographs of actual birds. Perhaps this seems odd; a graph instead of a snapshot on the blog of a photographer, but it is actually one of the more startling and eye-opening (or should I say “ear opening”) posts covered in this guide. A fascinating story about the sounds made by night time migrants. Range: via negativa, Pennsylavania, USA […]

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:33:10 +0000

Evan - Actually, I'm way behind in my reading about bird calls. Several great new books have come out just in the last two years, most notably Donald Kroodsma's The Singing Life of Birds, which I have yet to read. But other studies on animal intelligence are indeed showing that some birds are as smart as any primate (present company included). Hi Jarrett - Long time no "see"! It's pretty well established that regular bird calls show dialectical variation; the question is whether their flight calls do -- and/or whether one can detect it. If you follow my first link, to the oldbird.org page, you'll notice that the pioneer flight call analyses were only able to distinguish clusters of similar sounding calls in many cases. I didn't entirely understand Mike Lanzone's explanation of their own software, but it seems they're going beyond simple sonograms to some more 3-dimensional representations of sound.

By: Jarrett

Jarrett — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:41:01 +0000

Thanks for this. It makes complete sense that as birds radiate into communities their calls would radiate into “dialects,” just as human languages do.

By: Evan

Evan — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:54:39 +0000

Dave, you so make my day with this bit about the possibility of dialects. Previous best bird language news in my world was the mid-90s Nature article that revealed that songbirds dream in songs, appartently practicing and consolidating patterns heard during waking hours and coming up with new material.

Birds seem to be anything but “birdbrain”. I love social behaviour in animals.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:33:00 +0000

Glad you liked it! A little dry, I know, but if the poetry doesn’t flow I’m not gonna force it.

By: Pica

Pica — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:14:10 +0000

This is very, very cool. Thanks Dave.