Subject: BC Chickadee song dialects?
Date: Feb 5 14:15:40 2004
From: Jay Withgott - jwithgott at msn.com



OBOL & Tweeters --

I was astonished to hear amid this morning?s sun-induced early-spring
birdsong what I suppose must be my first Pacific Northwest Black-capped
Chickadees in full song. I was astonished because they sound nothing at all
like the BC Chickadees I?ve heard all my life everywhere I?ve been
throughout eastern North America. Having grown up in Massachusetts, where
Black-capped Chickadee is the state bird, I thought I knew this species
pretty well. Its song was simple: a plaintive two-note whistle, the first
note higher-pitched than the second: ?Deeee-doooo.? End of story, I
thought. But in my new neighborhood in Portland this morning, two
chickadees each sang a four-note song of shorter whistles all on the same
pitch: ?du-du-du-du.? A third bird sang (only once, and rather
half-heartedly) a 3-note song in which each of the notes (starting on the
same pitch) slurred downward: ?deu-deu-deu.? These calls sounded more like
Tufted Titmice than Black-capped Chickadees to my eastern ears. What was
going on? Do all Pac NW Black-caps sing like this, I wondered? Do the birds
out here have local dialects, or individual variation? Or are these
chickadees actually different enough from the eastern ones as to represent a
different taxon than my old lovable Massachusetts feathered friends?

So I consulted Dennis Paulson, who told me that Puget Sound Black-caps sing
like this, and that this song variation is beginning to be known among
ornithologists but that its geographic extent remains uncertain. He also
told me that he thought genetic studies show no differentiation between Pac
NW birds and eastern ones, but that they do differ morphologically.

Therefore, two questions for this group:
1. Can anyone point me toward the relevant scientific literature on
this? (I am temporarily separated from my BNA accounts, and I understand
some of the papers may be more recent anyway.)
2. Does anyone know the geographic extent of this song dialect? Is it a
west-side / east-side thing divided by the Cascades, or more complex? What
do chickadee songs sound like where YOU live?

Signed,
Curious in Portland



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