Two Types of Communication Between Birds: Understanding Bird Language Songs And Calls

alright so in this video I'm going to talk about bird communication and show you two of the most common types of communication in Birds really start to unpack how birds communicate with the different calls and songs that they have and this is one of the first steps in understanding bird language and being able to interpret what the birds are saying about your environment you might notice for example that birds are actually communicating different messages depending on whether they're singing or whether they're giving alarm calls or other types of calls and sounds that birds make so often when I work with people who are new to learning about birds and bird language they don't actually realize that you know birds have songs and birds have calls and these are really two very different types of communication so that's what we're going to explore together here and you'll see on the screen I have a few examples of real-life bird songs and calls that I'm going to play for you and unpack a little bit of the meaning behind what the birds are saying in these clips and I think at the end of this video you're going to feel pretty confident about making sense of the birds and their sounds and really knowing the difference between a song and a call so first off I've got a little example here of a song made by a sparrow and one of the things that I want to show you here is that there are actually a lot of really simple cues that can be heard in the sounds themself that let you know whether you're hearing a call or a song from a bird and I'm using a fancy-schmancy computer program called audacity that will actually turn the sounds we're going to be listening to into a picture so you can actually see the sound and these little jumbles of sound here on the screen are actually representations of a song from a sparrow you'll notice that it's a whole mishmash of noise it kind of goes all over the place and this little thing here is actually a call from a different bird also I'll talk about calls in a minute but what you're going to hear is that this song from a sparrow is a whole mixture of trills and whistles at various pitches all smushed together and then there's a space of maybe you know 10 seconds before it repeats again and it just repeats over and over again this is very characteristic of songs as you're going to see so let's just listen and then we'll talk more about it and what it means so one of the defining characteristics of songs made by birds is that they are long drawn out variable and sometimes melodic sequences of noise and you know if we were to make a list of descriptive words for songs we might say musical trilling whistling variable magical Pleasant long drawn-out repetitive and anytime you hear a bird making a series of sounds like what we just played now that's a song and you can identify that sound as being song even if you don't know what kind of bird is making that sound you know you could be visiting some far-off distant landscape with totally unfamiliar birds and you would still know that it's a song so bird songs are used to demonstrate territory they're used to attract a mate and protect the space where they gather food and make their nests from rival birds it also is a good indicator for bird language that a bird is not alarmed about a predator because birds do not sing when their life is an immediate danger so you really get a good glimpse into the life of birds when you hear a song happening on the landscape let's play another example here just to show you some of the variation that's possible this is an example of a goldfinch song it's a little bit more melodious it's a little bit less Trillian scattered but it still has all the classic indicators of bird song because it's this long drawn-out repetitive mishmash of sound and pitch so I'll play this one and then we'll move on to talk about bird calls okay so let's talk about bird calls and the simplest difference between bird songs and bird calls is really that calls lack the almost musical or telephonic quality of songs really a call is just a short burst of sound they're not melodious they don't trill like a telephone they're really pretty plain sounding when compared to songs so sometimes they can be very loud sometimes they can be actually fairly quiet so there's still quite a bit of variation but a call really is unmistakeably different from a song because it's just a very simple burst of sound so let's go ahead and pull up our example here that that's really the easiest way to get it you know you'll see these little bursts here these are calls from a bird and I believe that this is the call of a Starling in this clip and you know it's pretty random they're just all over the place not really following any particular rhythm here and up here there's actually another call this one's much quieter it might be a little bit challenging to hear on the recording I believe that this is the companion call of a junco but the key thing to notice is that in every case calls are just short bursts of sound and and really pretty plain so then as we get later into this clip over here where I have this marker you'll notice that we start getting some song coming in so pay attention for that and really don't worry about the species of birds don't worry about the difference between sparrows and starlings and robins just track in your mind for the difference between calls and songs and you'll be able to hear a wide variety of both in this clip so here we go okay so bird calls are most commonly used for the purpose of friendly communication between mated pairs of birds or between flocks of birds you know you might call that a companion call and that's what we just heard in that clip in those cases they're usually fairly quiet and soft you sometimes have to listen pretty carefully to actually notice them but calls are also used for territorial purposes and in alarm situations and in those situations you'll probably notice much more intense vocalizations so if we were to make a list of descriptive word for calls we might say that calls are short bursting repeating loud quiet peak tactic chitchat pip and there's obviously a huge range from from very mellow back-and-forth calling to absolute screaming for my life alarm calls so knowing these two high level categories of sounds made by birds that's really one of the highest level distinctions that's really important for understanding bird language and understanding the communication that's always happening between birds and so the next time you go outside you know just hold that question in the back of your mind while you're listening to the birds am i hearing a bird call or am i hearing a bird song and I think you'll immediately start to notice when you do that that you're just much more tuned in with the birds and it really prepares your ears and your listening skills to move on to deeper levels of understanding the language of birds so if you like this stuff if you're excited to go deeper with bird language I created a bird language adventure where I'll talk about a whole bunch more things to notice about bird behavior and bird communication so I'll put a link on this page to that series of free videos and I would love to guide you through using bird language to get more tune with your environment and learn about the wildlife of your local area through the voices of the birds you know this is me my name is Brian mertens I've used bird language to completely change the way that I think about nature and relate to the communication of birds my personal specialty is that I spent a huge amount of time unlocking the secrets of alarm calls and I frequently use bird alarm calls to locate crazy wild intense animals like cats and owls and things like that so if you want to come explore bird language with me all you have to do is click that link on this page to that series of free videos and you can go ahead and get started on your bird language adventure thanks so much for watching let me know your comments and questions and I will talk to you next time

Channel: NatureMentor

Views: 25,686

Rating: 4.8843374 out of 5

Keywords: communication between birds, bird communication, bird language, understanding bird language, bird calls and songs, communication in birds, birds, bird vocalizations, bird sounds, bird calls, bird song, tutorial, lesson, tips, learn, bird recordings, nature

Id: 4_1zIwEENt8

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2016