The overworn expression that there is no accounting for taste certainly applies to music.\u00a0 At this time of year, I thrill to the music of the birds whose concerts start well before the crack of dawn.\u00a0 As a reader of this column, I\u2019m sure you share my joy of the morning chorus.\u00a0 On the other hand non-birding friends and family may complain vigorously about the infernal early morning ruckus disturbing their sleep.<\/p>\n
Locally, American Robins are the first to welcome the new day with their caroled song around four AM, nearly an hour before dawn.\u00a0 Others join the choir and by dawn it is possible at a stationary poit to hear ten or more species singing.\u00a0 For the next hour, the male songbirds sing energetically and often.\u00a0 The frequency of singing starts to decline and by 10 AM, the chorus is essentially over.\u00a0 That is why Breeding Bird Surveys and other ornithological counts relying heavily on identification by sound must be done in the early morning.<\/p>\n
Why do birds sing with such vigor early in the morning?\u00a0 We don\u2019t really have a compelling explanation.\u00a0 Some ornithologists believe that the early morning is the best time for males to attract females that might have arrived on migration during the night.\u00a0 Or, perhaps singing allows a male to reassert possession of his territory to any males that might have arrived during the night.\u00a0 In the early dawn hours, light is too weak to permit birds to forage efficiently so singing may be a profitable use of the time.\u00a0 Often, weather conditions are calm in the early morning and songs can be broadcast then for maximal distance.<\/p>\n
The singing behavior of some songbirds is quite different during the early morning hours compared to the remainder of the day.\u00a0 The long, dry trill of a Chipping Sparrow is a familiar and easily recognized song that can be heard off and on throughout the day.\u00a0 A male typically sings the song from a perch at least twenty feet high.<\/p>\n
But an early riser has the chance to witness singing behavior that has only recently been studied.\u00a0 For the first half hour after dawn, male Chipping Sparrows sing from the ground!\u00a0 Males in adjacent territories gather in a central arena and sing very short songs in machine-gun like fashion to each other.\u00a0 Presumably, males are establishing a dominance hierarchy by these social singing events.<\/p>\n
The change in behavior is really quite striking.\u00a0 At 4:30 AM, the Chipping Sparrows are singing from the ground at a rate of about 40 songs\/minute.\u00a0 Then 45 minutes later, the males sing their longer, more familiar trills from perches in trees at a rate of three or four songs minute.<\/p>\n
Many warblers are known to sing two types of song.\u00a0 Accented songs usually end emphatically like the \u201cpleased-pleased-pleased-to-meetcha!\u201d of the Chestnut-sided Warbler and are seem to function primarily in mate attraction.\u00a0 Unaccented songs are used to proclaim territorial ownership to other males.<\/p>\n
Chestnut-sided Warblers in the dawn chorus sing almost entirely unaccented songs.\u00a0 Interestingly, every male has a distinctive song so individual recognition is possible.\u00a0 Later in the day, the males switch to the more easily recognized accented song.\u00a0 These accented songs are nearly identical among the males in a given area.<\/p>\n
Confirming the functions of these two song types, unaccented songs are typically given from the periphery of a bird\u2019s territory while the accented songs are given in the middle of a territory.<\/p>\n
The crescendo-like \u201ctea-CHER, tea-CHER, tea_CHER tea_CHER tea_CHER\u201d song of the Ovenbird is an easy song to recognize. \u00a0However, during the early morning, Ovenbird males fly above the canopy and sing a warbled flight song with a couple of \u201ctea-CHER\u201d phrases in the middle of the jumble of notes.\u00a0 At least 11 other warbler species sing early morning flight songs.<\/p>\n
[Originally published on June 10, 2012]<\/p>\n\n
The overworn expression that there is no accounting for taste certainly applies to music.\u00a0 At this time of year, I thrill to the music of the birds whose concerts start well before the crack of dawn.\u00a0 As a reader of this column, I\u2019m sure you share my joy of the morning chorus.\u00a0 On the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4625],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}