Perhaps, like many males, if they are getting plenty of mating action they
enjoy loudly bragging about it. While the new age birds among them like
proudly proclaiming the virtues of fatherhood.....
Jon
-----Original Message-----
From: Laurie & Leanne Knight <>
To: <>
Date: 06 November 2001 19:45
Subject: Apparent Correlation Between Whipbird Singing Skills
and Mating Success
>OK birdo's, here's a topic to get ya going. Is the following
>correlation due simply to the fact that the better singers have better
>mates, or perhaps sing better because they are in better condition, as
>opposed to the inference in the following article?
>
>LK
>
>
>
>http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/06/text/national18.html
>
>Bird says lead singers get most of the chicks
>
>Date: 06/11/2001
>
>By Richard Macey
>
>Tristen Bird enjoys nothing better than strumming his guitar and belting
>out a tune.
>
>The aptly named Taronga Zoo keeper and amateur musician is optimistic he
>can help bring endangered birds back from the edge of extinction by
>teaching them to sing better.
>
>For the past year, Mr Bird and his colleague, Dr Greg Johnson, of
>Adelaide Zoo, studied the vocal talents of Psophodes olivaceus, better
>known as the eastern whipbird, which inhabits the coastal rainforests of
>NSW, Queensland and Victoria.
>
>After taping about 100 hours of singing by five pairs of eastern
>whipbirds in captivity at Adelaide Zoo, the researchers electronically
>analysed the recordings and made a remarkable discovery.
>
>"The better a bird sings, the more receptive its mate will be," Mr Bird
>said yesterday. "The birds that breed the most have a greater vocal
>repertoire."
>
>They found that birds with better singing skills tended to mate more
>often and were more likely to produce bigger clutches of chicks.
>
>The most successful birds appeared to be better at reaching lower
>frequency notes, while the "poorer" singers seemed to produce higher
>frequency calls.
>
>Mr Bird told an international zookeepers' conference in Sydney yesterday
>that it might be possible to teach poor warblers to sing better - and
>boost their breeding - by playing them recordings of good singers.
>
>If their zoo birds picked up the tunes and responded by producing more
>chicks, the next step would be trying the technique on the endangered
>western whipbirds, which lived in Western Australia's Tin Can
>Bay [Two Peoples Bay??? - TCB is in Qld].
>
>The singing lessons could be extended to other threatened birds and
>possibly even to teaching endangered mammals how to improve their mating
>calls.
>
>Mr Bird plans to spend the next three years collecting more recordings
>of wild eastern whipbirds, but believes he has enough to begin the first
>whipbird singing classes before the end of the year. He hopes to splice
>together the calls of many whipbirds to produce an irresistible mating
>call.
>Birding-Aus is on the Web at
>www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
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>
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