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Songs
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
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
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.