My experience indicates that Mockingbirds mimic not only the birds they
hear directly, but other Mockingbirds' renditions of what they heard, and
so on - it's like the game of "rumors" passed from bird to bird. I believe=
this accounts for the many "songs" mockers sing that nobody can identify.
Mockers even mimic non-avian sounds, like cell phone rings, back-up horns,=
etc. The songs that Mockingbirds sing are certainly cultural, in that they=
are learned through experience in their surroundings.
Doug
At 10:14 PM 4/16/2007, geopaul7 wrote:
>Along these lines, I have noticed that Mockingbirds in different parts of=
>the country appear
>to mimic different species, found in those different parts of the country=
>(Louisiana vs.
>Arizona for example). I have never read anything published on this. It
>seems unlikely that
>each individual bird learned the details of each song from hearing each of=
>those different
>species throughout its lifetime. Indeed, the mimic of species appeared in=
>areas where that
>song was seldom heard, but "around." The songs appear to be "cultural" to=
>that extent.
>
>Does this support the niche hypothesis?
>
>--- In
><naturerecordists%40yahoogroups.com>=
m,
>Bernie Krause <> wrote:
> >
> > See
> <http://www.wildsanctuary.com/niche.pdf>http://www.wildsanctuary.com/nich=
e.pdf
> ("The Niche Hypothesis:
> > How Animals Taught us to Dance and Sing") first published in 1987.
> >
> > The idea of bird dialects was studied and published for years before
> > the ones below came to light, mostly through the work of the late
> > Luis Baptista, Director of the Dept of Birds & Mammals at the
> > California Academy of Sciences, the department with which I was
> > affiliated during and immediately after my doctoral work in the late
> > 70s/early 80s. Baptista's main subject was the White-crowned Sparrow
> > (Zonotrichia leucophrys). He trained many sets of young birds to
> > learn songs of other species as well as to alter the dialects of
> > other White-crowns whose offspring they were.
> >
> > Although he never got around to publishing his findings, he was
> > coming to the realization, just before his untimely death a few years
> > ago, that one of the contributing factors of the syntax may well have
> > been the Soundscape Niche Effect, or the complex ways in which the
> > soundscape of each White-crown flock affected their ability to learn
> > their songs so that they would be effective within the acoustic turf
> > they had chosen to live. The special combination of the biophony,
> > geophony, and anthrophony, in each White-crowned environment, had,
> > after all, a likely and unique effect on how the song syntax
> > developed.
> >
> > The idea that humans learned to dance, sing and drum from the
> > biophonies and geophonies of the natural world had also been around
> > for a while before I got to it (See Chapter 12 of the late Paul
> > Shepard's "The Others: How Animals Made us Human"), although not
> > fully developed into a thesis. Shepard's work is supported by the
> > parallel anthropological efforts of Louis Sarno, who has lived and
> > worked with the Ba'Aka Pygmies in a remote forest of the Central
> > African Republic, and Steven Feld, who worked closely with the Kaluli
> > of Papua New Guinea and who is now recording and studying a different
> > angle in Ghana. And, of course, the idea had been around for eons
> > before academics in the West wrapped their territorial minds around
> > the concept and gave it credence. It was, after all, practiced by
> > those human groups living much more closely connected to the natural
> > world.
> >
> > Bernie Krause
> >
> > >Interested in your thoughts about this one -
> > ><http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/article.cfm?>http://www.nwf.org/n=
a
> tionalwildlife/article.cfm?
>issueID=3D114&articleID=3D1452&utm_source=3DNationalWildlifeMagazine&utm_m=
edium=3DE-
>newsletter&utm_term=3Dapril%2Fmay2007&utm_content=3DSingingintheBrain&utm_=
campaign
>=3D1
> > >or <http://tinyurl.com/34faeu>http://tinyurl.com/34faeu
> > >
> > >----------------------
> > >Suzanne
> > ><http://web.tampabay.rr.com/swilli41/www>http://web.tampabay.rr.com/sw=
i
> lli41/www
> > >Florida, USA
> > >
> > >"There is no use of worrying about shells, for you can't keep them
> > >from busting in your trench, nor you can't stop the rain...what is the
> > >use of worrying if you can't alter things?" - Alvin C. York, Medal of
> > >Honor Recipient, July 1, 1918
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >"Microphones are not ears,
> > >Loudspeakers are not birds,
> > >A listening room is not nature."
> > >Klas Strandberg
> > >Yahoo! Groups Links
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Wild Sanctuary
> > P. O. Box 536
> > Glen Ellen, CA 95442
> > t. 707-996-6677
> > f. 707-996-0280
> > <http://www.wildsanctuary.com>http://www.wildsanctuary.com
> >
> >
>
>
***************************************
Doug Von Gausig
Digitally Recorded Birds Sounds at:
http://naturesongs.com/birds.html
Clarkdale, Central Arizona, USA
e-mail:
***************************************
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