THE DIN CHORUS!
World’s noisiest bird squawks louder than pneumatic drill
IF you think that bird song is soothing, then steer clear of the white bellbird.
It has now been identified as the noisiest bird in the animal kingdom – with a call louder than an eightlane motorway or a pneumatic drill.
The male white bellbird, which lives in the mountains of the Northern Amazon, may not look much. It is the size of a dove, weighing only half a pound (250 grams).
But when it opens its beak, the noise sounds like an emergency siren and reaches up to a deafening 125 decibels.
Female bellbirds, which are the target of the cacophony, risk hearing damage if they get too close.
Just like the peacock with its tail or a stag with its antlers, male bellbirds are desperate to impress, so twist around halfway through their song to blast the final note directly at the female. It can also sound like a bell, say naturalists.
Professor Jeff Podos, of Massachusetts Amherst University, who helped record the bird, said: ‘We were lucky enough to see females join males on their display perches. In these cases, we saw that the males sing only their loudest songs.’
He added: ‘We would love to know why females willingly stay so close to males as they sing so loudly. Maybe they are trying to assess males up close, though at the risk of some damage to their hearing systems.’
While a white bellbird emits up to 125 decibels, even 50ft away the noise level – at 95 decibels – is louder than a pneumatic drill at the same distance.
Researchers used high-quality sound recorders and high- speed video to record 154 songs by eight male white bellbirds, according to the study, published in the journal Current Biology.