Syntax of Birdsong

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Figure 1

Lazuli Bunting, Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, Lake County, Oregon, 11 June 2002

Figure 1. A song of a Lazuli Bunting, presented as (below) a sonogram (aka sound spectrogram) and (above) an oscillogram (aka waveform). The sonogram is a plot of frequency, perceived as pitch, (vertical axis) against time (horizontal axis) and reveals in a glance the frequency range (1) and duration (2) of the song. The oscillogram is a plot of variation in amplitude (perceived as loudness) on the same timescale as the sonogram. The gradual increase and then decrease in loudness of this song is shown by both the vertical range of the blue blobs (3) and the darkness of the black traces on the sonogram. Both graphs also show the timing of the song, which is even rather than accelerating or decelerating. Each continuous trace is a note (4). Notes are often combined into phrases (5), which are most easily recognized as such if they are repeated as a unit. Both notes and phrases function as grammatical units, e.g., they may be repeated. The syntax of this song involves the repetition of three different phrase-types. While such graphs can’t let you hear the sound, they describe it much more precisely and economically than words can. Lazuli Bunting recorded at Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, Lake County, Oregon, 11 June 2002. Recording, layout, and sonogram © Arch McCallum.

Figure 2

Field Guide Page: Small Owls That Toot or Trill

Figure 2. Grade 1 singing, exemplified by some owls that “toot” or “trill,” in field guide format. Vertical axes in kiloHertz, horizontal in seconds. All recordings from Voices of North American Owls (Vyn et al. 2006), presented with permission of Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Recording data in text: Voices of North American Owls disc number and track number, recordist, location, date, and Macaulay Library catalog number. Text, layout, and sonograms © Arch McCallum.

Figure 3

Figure 3. The relationships among parts of a flycatcher serenade follow strict rules, as illustrated by the Acadian Flycatcher. “AaB” designates the familiar chelup song of this species, which can be heard in an occupied territory from dawn until dusk on a daily basis. A bird only gives one or two chelups a minute, but sporadic vocalizing during daylight is a common flycatcher practice. To produce dawnsong (upper panel), the bird repeats the initial A note of chelup several times, followed by a full chelup, and then repeats this sequence continuously. The number of A notes in a sequence is variable, as is the spacing between A notes. Evening song is dawnsong with a twist, as the sequence in the lower panel is alternated with the sequence in the upper panel. Note C is the kip call note of the Acadian Flycatcher, probably its second most familiar sound. Dawnsong and evening song are not used daily. Recorded at Lumber River State Park, Robeson County, North Carolina, 30 April 2009. Recordings, layout, and sonograms © Arch McCallum.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Grade 2 repertoires and singing, exemplified by the five widespread empids of western North America, in field guide format. Vertical axes in kiloHertz, horizontal in seconds. Each panel is a composite of several recordings, all from western North America. Recording data available at www.appliedbioacoustics.com. Recordings © Andrew Rush or Arch McCallum; text, layout, and sonograms © Arch McCallum.

Figure 5

Figure 5. The “song-types” of a Grade 3 species are variations on a common theme, whether they represent geographic variation (left column) or individual variation (right column). Left: Three White-crowned Sparrow dialects. Individual males, at least in sub-boreal breeding populations, typically have only one song-type, which is shared with neighbors. These song neighborhoods, or dialects, can comprise hundreds or thousands of individuals, all singing the same song-type. These samples are all from the migratory pugetensis subspecies: Panel 1, Newport, Lincoln County, Oregon, 21 April 2001; Panel 2, Deschutes County, Oregon,14 May 2009; Panel 3, Lummi Island, Whatcom County, Washington, 10 April 2004. Note that all are of similar duration, occupy similar frequency range, start with a whistle, and include buzzes, slow trills, and/or a few “complex syllables.” Right: Three songs of a single Black-crested Titmouse also show similarity in frequency, duration, and syntax. Recorded on 31 May 2010 at the western outpost of the species in the Davis Mountains of Jeff Davis County, Texas (courtesy of the Davis Mountains Preserve of The Nature Conservancy). Recordings, layout, and sonograms © Arch McCallum.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Grade 3 singing, exemplified by five common sparrows, in field guide format. Note the dissimilarity among the three closely related species of Melospiza. Vertical axes in kiloHertz, horizontal in seconds. Recording data in text: recordist, location, date. Recordings, text, layout, and sonograms © Arch McCallum.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Portion of a serenade of a Wood Thrush. A single song is a combination of three components, always in the same order: a series of faint “bup” notes, barely visible in the sonogram, but audible in the recording; a variable whistle (indicated by letters); and an optional terminal trill. Only the whistled part is learned (Evans et al. 2011). Colored letters highlight the pattern of repetition of the variable whistle-types. Click on the letter to hear the specific song. In most cases the trill-type is not predictable from the whistle-type. Some individuals sing with much less variety than this one. Recorded at Montreat, Buncombe County, North Carolina, 8 May 1993.Recordings, layout, and sonograms © Arch McCallum.

All recordings presented here are the property of the recordists and are used here with the permission of the copyright holder. The name of the copyright holder appears above each sonogram.
Sonograms, text, design, and source code are the property of Applied Bioacoustics. © 2006-2011 Applied Bioacoustics.