{"id":2417,"date":"2010-09-19T14:54:46","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T20:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=2417"},"modified":"2010-12-03T23:53:41","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T05:53:41","slug":"humming-their-own-tune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/2417","title":{"rendered":"Humming Their Own Tune"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the bird world, there\u2019s usually a pretty big difference between vocalizations that are learned and those that are not learned. By and large, learning birds can produce much fancier songs than their learning-impaired cousins \u2013 perhaps because coding music directly into the DNA takes up a lot of genetic \u201cdisk space,\u201d introducing limits on the complexity of genetically-determined vocalizations.<\/p>\n

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Like many members of its family, this Anna's Hummingbird sings an extremely complex, learned song. Photo by Nathan Rupert (Creative Commons 2.0).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you flip through a North American field guide, you might notice that the birds in the front half of the book (ducks, hawks, owls, gulls, woodpeckers) tend to have pretty simple vocalizations, whereas all the most acclaimed avian singers (wrens, thrushes, finches, mockingbirds and thrashers) are in the second half of the book. This is no coincidence. First, birds in the order Passeriformes (the huge order that encompasses the second half of the field guide) sport a uniquely complex set of muscles to control their syrinx, enabling them to perform much more spectacular feats of vocal gymnastics. Second, with the important exception of the flycatchers, most North American passerines learn their songs.<\/p>\n

However, the learning of complex songs isn’t restricted to the so-called “songbirds.”\u00a0 In fact, some of the best examples of learned, complex songs come from a family that isn’t in the Passeriformes at all: the hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

To people in most parts of North America, this may come as quite a surprise.\u00a0 That’s because our most widespread and familiar hummingbirds — Ruby-throated, Black-chinned, Broad-tailed, and Rufous — actually don’t sing songs at all; their vocalizations are limited to a variety of chip notes and buzzes, and produce their territorial sounds mechanically, with trilling wings or chirping tails in display dives.\u00a0 But to those who live along the West Coast or in the southwestern deserts, the soft but astonishing song of the Anna’s Hummingbird is a familiar sound:<\/p>\n

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