Songs
The Tui of Zealandia
Inside the predator-fenced sanctuary of Zealandia in Wellington, the tui has recovered to densities not seen on mainland New Zealand in over a century. Jasper Wynn records its strange, mechanical, mostly inaudible song.
Section
Songs
Dawn chorus, hermit thrush in minor key, mockingbird mimicry research, the science of bird song.
Songs
The Cardinal in Winter
The Northern cardinal is one of the few common North American songbirds that sings substantially in winter, and one of the few in which the female sings nearly as often as the male. Pell Murphy listens through a North Carolina January.
Songs
Subsong: The Quiet Rehearsal of Young Birds
Before a young songbird produces full adult song it goes through a long quiet practice called subsong, which sounds like nothing in particular and is, in fact, where everything is learned. Inara Khan visits a Bombay rooftop where a juvenile magpie-robin is at work.
Songs
The Veery's Overlapping Voices
The Veery's spiraling, descending song has long been a puzzle. Recent work has shown the bird sings two simultaneous notes from its two-sided syrinx, producing the harmonic blur that gives the song its character. Jasper Wynn explains.
Songs
The White-crowned Sparrow Dialects of San Francisco
Since Peter Marler's 1970 maps, the Nuttall's white-crowned sparrow has been one of the most thoroughly documented examples of song dialect in any bird. Pell Murphy walks three neighborhoods to hear what has and has not changed.
Songs
Mockingbird Mimicry: The Research Record
The Northern mockingbird has been the subject of mimicry research for over a century, from Frank Chapman's 1916 census of borrowed phrases to David Gammon's recent work on song accuracy. Marius Doyle reads the record.
Songs
The Hermit Thrush in Minor Key
Marius Doyle works through what the literature has measured about the hermit thrush's pitch intervals, which a 2014 study found to align suspiciously with the harmonic series, and what an ear in a Vermont wood actually hears.
Songs
Dawn Chorus in a Pennsylvania Beech Wood
Jasper Wynn spent four mornings in May at a 32-acre stand of mature beech and tulip poplar in Centre County, Pennsylvania, recording the assembly of voices that begins twenty-eight minutes before sunrise and finishes, mostly, by six fifteen.