The Complex Song of the Hermit Thrush

Video Transcript

Hello. Welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Petersen and I'm the director of the Important Bird Areas Program for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Today, we're here at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield. And, we're going to be talking about birding by ear. Another of our really beautiful song birds is the Hermit Thrush. Its song, by all accounts, is one of the most spectacular in North America. One of the interesting things that people who study bird songs do is to record the songs and then electronically look at registrations on what are called sonograms. And when one looks at the sonogram of a bird like the Hermit Thrush, we find that there are some registrations that are very heavy and rich and others that are very fine and then that almost go up into the inaudible range for human hearing. So that, in addition to the fact that Hermit Thrushes, like the Wood Thrush that we mentioned earlier, so have the ability to literally produce two sounds at the same time with their syrinx, as opposed to our larynx. There are also sounds withing the song that probably unless we sort of slow them down electronically, we hardly hear at all. Our hearing is just not sensitive enough to pick up some of the nuances that are incorporated into the Hermit Thrush's song. But, undoubtedly to the Hermit Thrush, from one to another individual, they're able to pick up all of these variations. And, this is one of the ways that Hermit Thrushes sort of recognize the fact that if you're a female Hermit Thrush, this is my mate, not the mate of the territorial bird next door.

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