Interesting Facts about Songbirds You Can't Miss to Know!

Have you ever woken on a summer morning to the sound of birds singing outside your window? These birds are songbirds, and they’re among nature’s most beautiful animals. These birds include Koel, robins, cardinals, swallows, blue jays and many other birds.

People love songbirds not only for their songs, but for their vibrant colors and interesting nests. Many songbirds are brown or gray, but some are blue, red, black or even purple. Songbirds are among the smallest birds.

Fun Facts about Songbirds

Songbirds help people by eating insects that harm plants and trees. Songbirds can eat as many as 300 insects in a day!

·         Each species makes a different song.

·         Many songbirds migrate to Mexico or other warm places during the winter.

·         In addition to insects, songbirds eat fruit, nuts and seeds.

·         Songbirds build nests out of grass, yarn, mud, straw or other materials.

·         Songbirds can perch, or hang onto, branches.

·         Tropical songbirds reduce reproduction during severe droughts, and that reduction may increase their survival rates.

Interesting to know -

1. The songs of many bird species are highly complex and can contain dozens of notes per second. According to PBS, songbirds may take as many as 30 mini breaths per second to keep up the tune.

2. Songbirds of the same species may have different dialects depending on their geographical area. Their songs will be slightly different depending on where they live, much the same as people who speak the same language have accents depending on where they were raised. The white-crowned sparrow is a great example of this, with different members of the population having distinct dialects to their songs depending on their “neighborhood”.

3. Birds aren’t born knowing their population’s songs. Just like humans, they have to listen to adults singing to pick up on the “language."

"Like a child learning to speak, a songbird must hear vocal sounds of adults during a critical period and then hear its own voice when learning to imitate those sounds," according to Brain Facts. In fact, some scientists study how birds learn to sing as a way to understand more about how humans learn to speak.

4. In most cases, when you hear a bird singing, you’re probably hearing a male. Males use song to attract mates and stake out their home territory through song.

5. Several songbird species don’t sing only their own tunes, but appropriate the tunes of other species as well. The marsh warbler knows the songs of both European species as well as African species since they migrate to Africa in winter, and may know the various songs of as many as 70 other bird species.

"The song sparrow, for example, sings perhaps 10 songs apiece, marsh wrens and mockingbirds have up to 200 different songs and brown thrashers sing as many as 2,000 songs”.

Why Do Birds Sing??

“Go Away” and “Come Here”!

Birds use their songs to get the attention of their enemies. Why would they put themselves at risk like that? There are two main reasons: the birds are defending their territory and trying to find a partner. Some females do sing but it’s mostly the males that enchant us with their songs. You could say that their songs either mean “go away” or “come here”.

How Do Birds Sing?

From the Chest

We humans blow through our vocal cords to make them vibrate. Birds sing from their bellies, with their syrinx. It’s located just under the windpipe and is made of a membrane (skin flap) that the bird vibrates. Have you ever hit a drum and noticed that the skin moves a little? Think of it like that. Cowbirds can even vibrate their membrane in two different ways - so they can sing with two voices each.

Nightingale

The Most Beautiful Songs

In Europe, the nightingale is probably the best-known songbird. It has 120 - 260 “stanzas” that are two to four seconds long. They also imitate other birds when they sing. But just short sections, as long songs are too complicated for them.

Northern Mockingbird

The Most Songs

If you hear 10-15 different birds singing in your garden but there’s only one bird in the tree, a mockingbird might be the cause. They like to imitate their colleagues and have an impressive range of songs: between 50 and 200 songs. The northern mockingbird actually lives in North America but has been sighted in Germany. The brown thrasher is said to have 2,000-3,000 different songs.

Sedge Warbler

The Longest Songs

The sedge warbler sings the most complicated and longest songs. Because it can combine individual parts in new ways, it never sings the same song twice.

Eurasian Jay

The Best Impressionist

Suddenly, you can hear a cellphone ring, car tires screeching, a fire engine, a chainsaw and a camera trigger - all these noises can also come from birds. The best-known imitators are common hill mynas, lyrebirds, bowerbirds and scrubbirds. In Germany, western jackdaws, starlings, Eurasian jays, marsh warblers and northern mockingbirds also like to “copy” noises. Why do they do it? More and more birds are moving to areas inhabited by humans because there’s always food there, as well as more and more parks and trees. They blend into their surroundings by imitating sounds (but don’t forget the songs of their own kind).

Australian Magpie

The Most Social Singers

The Australian magpie loves singing together in a choir with its fellow birds, and their singing can span up to four octaves. The white-crested laughingthrush from the tropical regions of Africa and southern Asia sings in a choir where each member has its own stanza. They don’t all sing at the same time; it sounds like only bird is singing.