The Song of Birds.

Te Aroha News, 26 November 1887, Page 5

The Song of Birds.

The Hon. Dames Barrington, who devoted a great deal of attention to the habits of birds, says that " notes in birds are no more innate than language in man, and depend entirely on the master under which they are bred, as far as their organs will enable them to imitate its note." In order to prove this theory he had tluee young linnets brought upiesnecfcively under a skylark, a woodlark, and a titlatk, and each one adhered entirely to the song of its foster parent, and never uttered a single linnet's note. There is no doubt that Mild birds as veil w those in confinement have to leavn their tong fiom a teacher ; and, like children, are quite as ready to learn what is wrong as what is right, for one often hears them introduce notes from a stranger's song, instead of keeping that of the parent bird. Every young bird has to learn bylongand constant practice to "warble ii f s Creators praise,'' and it is ixost interesting on a morning in early summer, in the country vo listen to tneir patient efforts to learn a song. The first sound a bird utters is a chirp, a weak and querulous cry for food, which is soon entirely dropped, for though many birds chirp in later life, the note is quite different from this eaily cry. Again, to qoote^ Barrington, who has listened more attentively than any one else of his generation to the music of the woods, he give 5'5 ' as his opinion that this note changes, when the bird is about a month old, to a characteristic call, which is retained by the bird through life, though it is generally a mere repetition of one and the same note. This, he says, is followed by what bird-catchers call "recording," that is the nestling's first attempt at real song, but the effort is not afc first in the least like the J futura song, and it is only very gradually i that one can discover what the young bird is aiming at ; in fact, the attempt is exactly analogous to the ci owing and prattling of a baby, which, to anyone who had no previous experience of infants, would give very little prospect of ordinary conversation This "recording" continues for ten or eleven months, during which time the young bird patiently repeats one passage at a time, in a low tone, till he is sure of that part of his lesson, when he raises his voice, but drops it again at the next difficulty, as though not wishing to be heard. By degrees, after practising each part of the song separately, | he learns to connect the passages together, and by the time he is about a year old he can execute his whole song without faltering, and retains it henceforward almost unaltered. To a certain limited extent, there seems to be an universal language among birds ; the cry of alarm, at any rate, seems common to all. If a number of birds are feeding together in a garden, the warning of the approach of a cat is understood by them all, whether given by starling, robin, or sparrow ; and a frightened cry from a blackbird will scare a whole hedgeful of little birds. Possibly, too, they may have some comrronly understood signal for an unexpected "find" of food; pertain it is that a few minutes after food is thrown out into a garden birds of all sorts and sizes come flocking to get a share ; but how much they understand one another it is difficult to discover. It is a curious fact that, however many birds may be^ singing around one in the open air, all with their own distinctive voices, yet their eongs are never discordant ; and it hns been thought by many observers that in order to produce thisresultbirdsmust all sing in the same k"ey. In order to test this, a musician, quoted by Barrington, carefully observed the principal notes of a number of birds ; and gives the following list as the result of his observations. In the song of the woodlark the chief note is F natural, that of the ' thrush A natural, the owl D natural (some-

times B flat), the nightingale Gr natural, the cock A natural, the very large cock B flat, the bantam cock C natural, the cuckoo C natural, falling to A. Altogether six notes, all of which, it will be observed, are to be found in the key of F major, which Barrington concludes therefore is the key in which all birds sing. There is, however, pome difference of opinion on this point ; and White of Selborne mentions having on one occasion heard o-vvla hooting in three different keys, and on another in two keys (AflatandUllat). Other observersthink that the reason the songs of different birds are not discoidant is that the first one to begin gives the key, and the others take up the song in the same. At any rate it is certain that there arocontinuoussteps and harmonic intervals in the songs of birds, and however many variations they may introduce into thoir tunes they always f-eem to perceive and select the hannonio aflinities ot notes. 1 he song is always sung through in one key, and the intervals most commonly used arc a 4th and a sbh. The cuckoo, however, uses a 3rd, a major 3id early in spring, and a minor 3rd later. Cocks often use a sth in their crow. An at'entive listener will perceive that the songs of many birds are merely a series of variations on one single theme, and though repeated in irregular order and differing very much from one another eacli variation may easily be recognised. — Vido) ids Laurd.