14Ingham’s Daily Express W RLD
THE sky was steely grey, the wind from the north and snow flurries threatened, when a song from Africa drifted over the copse. It was the liquid bubbling of a garden warbler, defying temperatures that might have made it think twice about quitting the South African sun. The spring invasion is in full swing, with cuckoos, swallows, warblers and even ospreys popping up in my county, Surrey, mostly on their way north.
Many will enrich the dawn chorus, joining the native songsters such as blackbirds, robins and goldfinches. But each one has to learn to sing, says Dr Joe Cooper in the British Trust for Ornithology’s BTO News.
In the 18th century an English lawyer, Daines Barrington, proved this by putting young linnets in the nests of skylarks, woodlarks and meadow pipits.
The linnets learned the songs of their hosts – and never got near their natural twitter.
As chicks and newly fledged young, songbirds listen with father, storing their species’ songs in their memory. As they get older they experiment, babbling like babies, until they sing like Daddy.
For most, the song is then fixed for life.The birdie jazz improvisers are starlings and canaries which develop songs until they squawk.
But this learning explains why occasionally birds sound a bit out of sorts.
Near me is a song thrush that has included the mewing call of the local buzzard in his repertoire.
And a blackbird has clearly been listening to the song thrush whose tune involves different phrases, each repeated a few times. The blackbird, which soothes the garden with a lazy fluting, has worked in a phrase that he repeats.
One spring in a local wood I heard a confused willow warbler. They look like chiffchaffs and the best way to tell them apart is their songs. The chiffchaff is named for its two-note call while the willow warbler has a cascading trill.
This willow warbler had obviously spent too much time with the chiffchaffs as a youngster – and had incorporated a few “chiffchaffs” into his back catalogue.
Whether songs are simple or complex, says Dr Cooper, their message is the same: “This is my territory” or “Mate with me”.
No wonder the garden warbler defied the weather. Who can wait for love?
MOST dogs favour their right paw, says Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Not my labrador Inca, a definite leftie.
So are my dad, my wife and son. I’m right-handed but a left-handed bat at cricket – and prefer left-hand forehand at tennis to right-hand backhand. Then again, I never win.
BACK to the drawing board for one option to tame climate change – geo-engineering.
Putting reflective aerosols into the atmosphere would stop some sunlight reaching Earth’s surface.
But a US study in the PNAS journal says this might disrupt storm patterns, organisms and ecosystems. We’ll still have to cut emissions, then.