I did it fly way... the birds that can warble like Sinatra

TO the human ear, the trills and tweets of songbirds may just be pretty background noise.

But some, it seems, have duet singing skills similar to Frank and Nancy Sinatra.

Researchers studying cranebrake wrens in Costa Rica found a parent and child take it in turn to sing lines of their songs, learning not to interrupt each other.

The juvenile birds learn from their parents so they can impress potential mates later in life.

The study was led by researchers from University of Miami with help from St Andrews University.

It found that the wrens sing highly complex alternating duets, with juveniles copying the ‘phrases’ of a same-sex parent

‘Follow duet code more strictly’

before trying it out with the parent of the opposite sex.

The researchers recorded interactions between adult and young canebrake wrens. Over about 25 days the juvenile wrens learned to reduce their interruptions by about 20 per cent.

Esmerelda Quiros-Guerrero, from St Andrews University, said: ‘We showed that juveniles learn how to coordinate and what to sing by singing with their parents.

‘Whenever their parents also sing they follow the duet code much more strictly, versus when they’re singing on their own.’

The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, does not apply to British songbirds, where only the males sing.

A previous study found birds can switch singing parts within just 0.06 seconds and alternate between up to 30 melodies, depending on the duet.