Birds Archives - Animal Bioacoustics

Soundbites is your weekly dose of the newest, coolest bioacoustics news, plus other fun stuff, all in bite-size form. A day late and a dollar short this week, folks. Blame my thesis…

Guys, I haven’t got a lot of new bioacoustics news for you this week. I got a great Google alert about a paper called “Not so sexy sounds”, but then my computer thought the link was corrupted and I couldn’t get it for you.

Noise impacts nestling begging in tree swallows: anthropogenic noise has different impacts depending on the species, which is why it’s important to keep studying its effects. Here, tree swallow nestlings increased amplitude and frequency in their begging calls when exposed to white noise; also, when exposed to feeding calls at noisy nests, parents responded with less feeding than at control nests. So noise changed the behavior of both parents and nestlings, and while they were able to compensate and no one was left hungry, it’s not clear if there’s a threshold above which this wouldn’t work anymore.

Fun link of the week: here’s a weird one for you. I was thinking about the acoustics and soundscapes of fall and somehow I ended up googling “pumpkin instrument”. There is an entire musical group devoted to making instruments out of vegetables. They are called, appropriately, the Vegetable Orchestra. Here is a video of them recording one of their albums:

What’s that, you say? Has Soundbites returned? Indeed it has! After a long hiatus for the summer, Soundbites is returning this term to provide you with all the latest and greatest bioacoustics news, bite-sized!

Phantom road experiment reveals noise degrades habitat: man do I like this experiment. As all of the ORCAA students could tell you, sometimes it’s hard to differentiate the effects of noise from general habitat degradation. These researchers set up a “phantom road” made of speakers and found evidence of avoidance and decreased body condition in birds.

Gorillas change vocalizations based on audience effects, not environmental factors: I don’t get to write about gorilla vocalizations very often! These researchers wanted to test the acoustic adaptation hypothesis to see if both mountain and lowland gorillas changed their vocalizations to maximize transmission in their cluttered (physically and acoustically) environment. Instead, the gorillas changed their vocalization based on social cues, like nearest neighbors and visual separation.

Traffic noise impacts zebra finch embryos and nestlings: the authors set out to distinguish the impacts of noise from other habitat variables by using captive zebra finches. High-noise groups had higher embryo mortality and slower nestling growth, and noise also was found to possibly exacerbate stressed animals further and contribute to reduced parental care.

Fun link of the week: acoustic scientists recently shattered the world record for longest echo. In Scotland, there are long tunnels that used to be used for oil storage. A gun shot echoed for a ridiculous 112 seconds!

Soundbites is a biweekly feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Multimodal signalling in redwing blackbirds in noisy situations: more bird stuff this week to start off. Redwing blackbirds attract mates both acoustically (with songs) and visually (by showing off their fancy red shoulders). The visual signal was thought to be a sort of backup for the acoustic signal. In noisy conditions, these authors found that birds will change their calls but not their visual signaling, implying that the two signals are separate.

To be loud or not to be loud, that is the question: Females of many acoustic species tend to prefer their males loud because being loud requires energy. Or so we thought! Here the authors found that singing loudly in zebra finches is constrained more by social context than it is by energy expenditure. You should click on this link if only for the diagram of the zebra finch inside a respirometry mask. It’s adorable.

Fun link of the week: you guys know I love the science side of YouTube, right? I’ve made no secret of that. So for this week’s fun link, I give you a video from Joe Hanson of It’s Okay To Be Smart about the loudest sound:

(also, look! I finally figured out how to embed videos!)

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, mostly) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Acoustic “sonic net” may deter invasive European starling communication: noise isn’t all bad. Sometimes it allows us to get rid of things we don’t want, like invasive species. Here researchers used a “sonic net” comprising of frequencies overlapping with starling communication frequencies over a feeding patch. Birds under the net didn’t respond to alarm calls, which is promising in using acoustics as a deterrent for this species.

Singing higher doesn’t guarantee success for urban birds: blame the surplus of bird literature on springtime, I guess. In the bioacoustics world we often talk about the seminal “Birds sing at a higher pitch in traffic noise” paper; here, the author of that paper addresses how that affects survivorship. Turns out there’s no correlation between success in an urban environment and singing at a higher pitch.

Traffic noise masks communication in freshwater stream fish: I’m just going to leave this one here. Traffic noise can impact entire watersheds. Anyone interested in making quieter cars yet???

Fun link of the week: in the grand tradition of fun links of the week having nothing to do with sound, this one goes out to Selene, who defends on Friday. Good luck, Selene! You’re going to do awesome! (and clearly, bring a sword.)

(image courtesy of xkcd)

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, mostly) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Bioacoustics helps find what may be a new beaked whale species: this one was hard to miss this week, as it was all over the pop press news as well. Here’s the original article. Passive acoustic monitoring in the Antarctic found echolocation and communication signals that were beaked-whale-esque, but unlike species seen before this. It might be a new species!

Cicadas and birds partition acoustic space in the tropics: I think the acoustic niche hypothesis is really neat, and it’s cool to see it in practice. Bird species and cicadas in the tropics vocalize at similar frequencies, so birds avoided calling when cicadas were calling. If they did call during cicada song, birds changed their frequency to avoid overlap.

Fun link of the week: Michelle had an awesome post last week about paleo-bioacoustics (what a field name!), so continuing in that theme, let’s talk about terror birds. Have you guys seen a terror bird skull before? Terrifying. This new research suggests that they had low voices and were better at perceiving low-frequency sounds. This means we’re one step closer to my dream, knowing what dinosaurs actually sounded like…

Soundbites is a weekly (less often when Danielle is doing fieldwork) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound. No April Foolin’ here, just cool research (because Danielle hates April Fools. Seriously.).

Grasshoppers have trouble localizing mates in noisy conditions: another tale in the continuing story of how noise screws up mating for lots of different taxa. Grasshoppers can locate mates by sound very well in quiet conditions, but it takes more time and energy to do it in noisy conditions.

Using passive acoustic monitoring to document sperm whale predation on fishing grounds works: I saw this as a talk at last year’s Acoustical Society of America meeting, and it was just as cool then. Collaboration with fishermen is allowing researchers to document sperm whale depredation, all using passive acoustic monitoring. This also allows them to easily test new deterrent methods.

Fun link of the week: you guys. Look at this weird-sounding bird I found for you. This bird is so weird. I heard it described as the red-alert sound from Star Trek and I agree. (also, look, I finally figured out how to embed YouTube videos!)

Soundbites is a weekly (less often when Danielle is doing fieldwork) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound. Yes, I know it’s been awhile. I’ll try to make this one extra awesome to make up for it.

Dolphins have social food calls: it turns out that humans aren’t the only ones to gossip about our food (see anyone’s Instagram feed ever). These researchers found that wild bottlenose dolphins had particular social calls that were highly correlated with food calls, and didn’t occur otherwise. Dolphins might therefore be sharing information about the food patch itself.

Invasive cane toad calls change the calling patterns of native Australian frogs: as I’m deep in frog fieldwork, you just knew I’d have some frog news for you. Invasive species are bad as it is (and cane toads are particularly bad), but they might also be changing the way native species communicate. Here, one native species decreased their call rate with playback of cane toad calls. I hope these authors extend this work with observational studies, there’s a lot of potential here.

Birds shift the frequency of non-breeding calls above noise: we’ve heard about birds shifting their frequency before, but only with breeding calls. Here, black-capped chickadees (a local species) and American goldfinches both shifted their non-breeding calls (described as “chickadeedeedee” and “po-tay-to-chip”, which I love) above the frequency of urban noise.

Fun link of the week: apropos of absolutely nothing at all, did you guys know that sand dunes sing!??!?! Not only do they sing, they sound creepy! Someone needs to work on some weird ambient music with the stuff, stat!

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Classification of non-song repertoire in Southeast Alaskan humpbacks: I am only cheating a LITTLE bit with the fact that this is Michelle’s paper, but it is also very very interesting and applicable! Congrats, Michelle!

Soundscape analysis shows parrot preference for old-growth forest: these researchers used acoustic monitoring to show that seven out of nine species of parrot preferentially perch in old-growth forest instead of regenerating forest. Deforestation has long-term consequences that can’t be corrected by simply regrowing things, guys.

Fun link of the week: Holger has successfully moved to Ithaca, NY only to find himself buried in another Northeastern Snowpocalypse. So this week’s link discusses why it’s so much quieter when it snows. Hey Holger, send the Pacific Northwest some of that–I want to go snowboarding!

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Chronic noise impacts anti-predator behavior in house sparrows: a lot of the time, bioacoustics researchers are looking at the impact of noise on communication behavior, but that’s not the only behavior that can be affected. Female house sparrows flushed more easily in chronic noise environments, but this didn’t have an impact on their reproductive success.

Traffic noise affects coloration, not calling, in European treefrogs: some frogs use what’s called multimodal signaling to attract mates, where females are drawn not only by the calling but also by a visual cue, like vocal sac inflation (see my previous post). Here, it turns out that treefrogs don’t seem to be able to change their calling structure, but they are less vibrantly colored in noisy areas. This means it’s likely that noise doesn’t just affect vocal species.

Fun link of the week: this song has been in my head all week, and it’s called WHALE, so I’m pretty sure you should go listen to it.

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Bill morphology shifts along with fundamental frequency in urban birds: we talk a lot in ORCAA about the way animals change their vocalization in response to outside pressure, but there are physiological constraints on the changes that can be made (for example, there’s no way I can sing bass, although I can get to tenor if I warm up). Birds in urban, disturbed areas had longer, narrower bills, which might help them get food at feeders, but actually makes it harder for them to vocalize at the higher frequencies that are more advantageous in noisy areas.

40-million-year-old protowhale was sensitive to low frequency sound: I’m a little bit of a paleo-nerd, so this was pretty cool to see. They looked at CT scans of the inner ear structures of this fossil, Zygorhiza kochii, and compared it to current mysticetes, and found that they were similar, indicating Zygorhiza was probably also sensitive to low-frequency sound the way our current baleen whales are. This implies that the order developed with a sensitivity to low-frequency and toothed whales’ high-frequency sensitivity came later.

Baird’s beaked whales are affected by sonar: beaked whales are some of the most mysterious ocean-dwellers, and we know little about their life history, behavior, or response to noise. Using acoustic tags, these researchers found that a Baird’s beaked whale displayed unusual diving behavior after being exposed to sonar.

Fun link of the week: I’m taking next week off because it’s the day before Thanksgiving here, and I’ll be traveling and then spending four straight days eating my family’s amazing cooking. So this week I give you a video about turkey vocalizations! Bonus: if you have energy, a paper cup, some string, and a paperclip after gorging yourselves on turkey, you can make a simple turkey-ish call.

Animal Bioacoustics

Technology. Ecology. Noise

Tag Archives: Birds

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