Gene <hunnhome at accessone.com> said;

" ... I have, however, heard (and recorded)
"aberrant" Black-throated Grays that sound like anything from a Nashville
Warbler to a House Wren! Since they learn their songs there's always the
possibility they will imprint on some neighbor by mistake, I guess."

i met luis baptista last week at the UW when he presented his
work on white-crowned sparrow song dialects. according to his
data, it appears that white-crowned sparrows can not only
memorize the songs of their white-crowned sparrow neighbors,
but they will also memorize and sing perfect renditions of
songs produced by other species with whom they share habitat.
for example, baptista made recordings of white-crowned
sparrows that were singing songs of several distinct white-crowned
sparrow dialects, and he also had recordings of them singing
a fluent song sparrow song, and even one notable white-crowned
sparrow sang a perfect lincoln's sparrow song.

if i remember correctly, i think that he had also noticed that
song sparrows do the very same thing.

baptista had postulated that learning another species song was
important for territorial defense, so the territory holder
could, in essense, speak directly to a particular neighbor.

it would not surprise me to learn that this ability to memorize
and reproduce clearly other species' songs is common to all
passerines.

Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~nyneve/
^~^~^~Graduate School: it's not just a job, it's an indenture!~^~^~