Subject: [Tweeters] Black-capped Chickadee: NW song dialects Kroodsma
Date: Mar 28 12:07:59 2012
From: Marcus Roening - Marcus.D.Roening at gsk.com


Hi Tweets,

If the dialects of bird songs are of interest to you, there is a whole section on Black-capped Chickadees in "The Singing Life of Birds" by Donald Kroodsma pages 135-145, 2005. Kroodsma is one of the giants in bird song and his book includes a CD so that you can follow his sonograms and listen at the same time to regional differences and understand some of the nuances to listening to bird song. I picked up my copy (one of many) at Half Priced Books.

A quote from the end of the Black-capped Chickadee section: "What about those odd singers in Oregon and Washington west of the Cascade Mountains? Based on the above reasoning, I predict that these birds are resident and non-migratory, and, more importantly, that they are relatively isolated from chickadees on the rest of the continent, not participating in the mass movements that shuffle chickadees elsewhere. That is my best guess."

He has a whole chapter on why non-migratory birds (with lots of NW examples) seem to have a richer, more varied and larger song selection, including some work done with western Song Sparrows in Seattle's Discovery Park.

Good Birding,

Marcus Roening
Tacoma WA
marcus.d.roening at GSK.com
C: 253-988-8313