Re: A challenge for recordists: songbirds prefer the latest tunes ?

["David Ellsworth" davidells]

At 2007-07-17 11:19, rchapanis wrote:

>'Seems that female songbirds prefer the latest songs -- a challenge
>for the male birds as well as recordists, eh?
>
>For details, see
><http://www.livescience.com/animals/070710_latest_song.html>http://www.liv=
escience.com/animals/070710_latest_song.html
>
>Warmly,
>
>Roger

Thanks for posting this link, Roger.

This is an interesting hypothesis. But from the
description in the article, it seems like the
experiment was too limited, using only two songs
=97 one recorded in 1979 and one in 2003. That's
not enough data to make a conclusion from; the
2003 song could simply be better music, for
reasons unrelated to its age. (To my ear, neither
the 1979 or the 2003 songs are as good as most of
the White-crowned Sparrow songs I've heard
locally.) Repeating the experiment with different
songs from widely separated years could have a
reversed outcome. Further study is warranted!

David