[Mnbird] Curious About Something

Mon Jul 1 10:11:05 CDT 2019

Interesting pondering. I didn’t respond to this for several reasons but a recent request for a reply has me needing to share. First let me qualify myself. I have a BS in Zoology and a Masters in Environmental Science. Went to college for 17 years because I liked it and am a data-research junkie. I took every -ology class I could and have been birding for 50 years. I especially liked my graduate college class in Ethology which is the science of animal behavior. When I bird, my thrill is in not just seeing them but trying to understand their behaviors, their place in the ecological niche where I see them, the survival traits, diet, mating rituals, breeding cycles, defense/offense behaviors, etc. So I think I at least have an opinion on your questions. 

One of the biggest Truths I have found in animal behavior is that it is always just an opinion. We manage to project human traits and characteristics on animals as a way to understand them - and, bottom line, they ain’t human - and unfortunately, in trying to understand their behaviors, we are human. So we are great at making things up - in fact, this is our greatest attribute. That is why scientific “fact” is based on something being measurable and repeatable - and that anyone else can experience the same thing - reliably.

All of that being said, this is my opinion of the question you pose on the singing behaviors. Individual birds can have quite a variety of “voices” and songs - and yet in the same thought, they are extremely limited - at least to the human ear. In my animal behavior study with Northern Mockingbirds for example, mockingbirds mime other birds but still likely have their own unique “mockingbird” signature song and calls. I found that the behavior of the bird was combined with the calls to get the bird’s point across - be it “I love you”, “this is my territory”, “who are you”, “this is me”, “any available females out there”, “any available males out there”, etc. 

Mockingbirds “post” around their nesting sites - that is they find 3 or 4 high, bare, out in the open, perches and sing like crazy from each one sometimes in a set rotation and sometimes in random order. And I could only just assume it was the male bird doing this behavior. The same bird would also use the same “syllables” of “his” call to convey other information but would do it from differing locations - like when “he” was approaching the nest with food or, and possibly different syllables when approaching without food. (I guessed that last part.) When a bird or predator intruded into the mocker’s territory, similar syllables were used but with differing volume, intensity, length, or variation. 

All in all, I discovered that the mocker was using its “language” in a way that I couldn’t really understand other than to say the bird got its point across with its song just being an element of the communication. Humans do it to but we don’t put 2+2 together to notice it in our behavior - and we think in autopilot that the words carry all of the intended information. Think about that for a moment and you can see what a big role our body language and variations in our volume and intensity molds the meaning of our words. Especially true with sarcasm.

So to address your questions, we don’t really know what the specific birds are communicating without knowing a lot more than just hearing them. We can rely on robins calling early mornings when they are nesting and make up what that means. But for most birds, we don’t know what is happening in their immediate world or their feeding or breeding cycles or if they are just uttering a warning when they feel threatened because they spotted a predator nearby. 

The other thing I noticed is that there are a lot of the individual birds out there and unless I can see and follow an individual bird by sight, I might be finding myself studying a different individual thinking it is another one - and each individual having completely different experiences to which they are reacting and responding.

It is also interesting to note that we don’t really know only by song or call if a bird is male or female. We can speculate based on “scientific evidence” but the world is always full of surprises to let us know that we don’t really know anything. Plus not a species have a male that looks different from the females and vice versa - and yet some do. (try to explain that one). And I am not even going to mention the apparently gay penguins I studied for an afternoon at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas many years ago.

So I would say it might be likely that there are more individual birds out there than you might know - and each one calling for completely different reasons. 

Our predisposition to anthropormorphize (attribute human characteristics or behavior to) the earth’s fauna - past and present - can take us away from what we can learn and experience and have us just make stuff up to try to find an answer we are happy with. We all do it. Me too. When I stop for that science-trained moment though, I can make a note of something I noticed rather than seek a conclusion - because odds are, I just made that up - and it sure sounds good.

All in all, given my background, I am very good at making an “educated” conclusion or give a convincing answer but even science is wrong most of the time when we look back at what we thought was scientific fact. Examples? bleeding with leaches to heal people, atoms are the smallest particles, this is what dinosaurs look like and how they move, complex organisms have more genes than simple ones, birds don’t use tools, Columbus discovered America, etc.

Hope this doesn’t just muddy your pool

Thomas Maiello
612-297-2532

> On Jun 27, 2019, at 8:01 AM, cherise robb via Mnbird <mnbird at lists.mnbird.net> wrote:
> 
> Hello, birding friends,
>  
> I have always been curious about this and it seems to happen every year. In late spring and early summer I will hear a few birds sing who don’t sing regularly like the other birds. For example, this spring I heard a wood thrush sing a few phrases on Mother’s Day. That was a nice gift since it is one of my favorite songsters. I didn’t hear it again so I figured it was a migrant. This morning I heard a wood thrush sing for a minute or so. Has he been there all along? Why doesn’t he sing like all the others? Is it because he doesn’t have a mate? If so, why isn’t he singing to attract one? Or could it be that birds that are unated wander? About a week ago I heard a veery but only on that night. If anyone has some insight into this phenomenon, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. Hope you all have a blessed day.
>  
> Cherise Robb
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