BIRDSONG is one of the best known —and best loved—aspects of the natural world. Many of us love listening to the dawn chorus, the songsters in our garden or the birds we hear on walks in the countryside. Yet not all birdsong is what it seems. Some birds deliberately mimic the songs of other, totally different species and a few are able to imitate human sounds. Many people have been confused— and sometimes infuriated—by what sounds uncannily like a car alarm going off in the street outside their home or the ringing of a telephone. Sometimes, it takes them days or even weeks to discover the culprit: the common, but sonically talented, starling.
Across the world, other species have become so adept at mimicking other birds that their name reflects their ability, such as with the mockingbirds of the Americas, which can mimic up to 200 different natural and human sounds during a single lifetime. Other species, notably parrots and myna birds, are even able to imitate and reproduce specific voices and language phrases.
Why, you might ask, do only a handful of the world’s birds show these skills when the vast majority do not? This is down to ‘runaway sexual selection’, in which the females of certain species show a marked preference for males that are able to reproduce a wide range of sounds, choosing them as their mates over the less skilled ones—much like the evolution of the peacock’s tail.
Common starling
Sturnus vulgaris
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