Birds are very beautiful creatures. It is known that most of the birds belong to the songbirds. And this is several thousand species! They have such an anatomical structure that allows them to make sounds that are needed in turn for a number of things. However, not all of them can sing with melodies.
Reasons for singing
Why do birds sing and make sounds? Of course, this sounds beautiful, pleasing to our human ears, but the reasons are due to purely biological factors. Below are just the main ones.
- Designation of its territory. Yes, it also happens with birds that they need to allocate and protect their place, and this can be done by singing. So they, one might say, protect their nests, cubs and places with food. After all, probably, everyone noticed how little birds sing, quickly jumping from branch to branch? So they designate their branch (or several trees). They can sing like this all day long.
- Another important reason is that the male attracts the attention of the female so much. He has many competitors, so it is important to try to win the attention of his beloved: with his singing and alsocolor, bird dances and courtship.
- Sounds are also used for communication. Speaking specifically, one bird can call another bird with calling signals, or cubs can call their parents. This is often used in packs so as not to fight back, and also in forests where it is difficult to see your own, but you can hear them by sounds. As a rule, calling signals differ slightly from singing.
Singing birds - who are they?
There are a number of common features. Songbirds are usually terrestrial. Also, most of them build nests in the form of a bowl or basket. Regardless of size, many songbirds are insectivorous.
Now let's look at some of the species in more detail.
Famous singing birds
The list of birds, as already mentioned, is very large. Let's move on to the names of singing birds, the most famous in our expanses in a temperate climate.
The nightingale is such a modest dim bird that everyone knows about, but few have heard his songs. Despite its nondescript exterior, it makes the most incredible sounds: from melodic rhythms to whistling. And all this can be heard, as a rule, at night and at dawn
Thrushes seem to play flutes when they sing. They are also usually very small in size. Moreover, both the well-known hermit thrushes and black representatives of the species can sing melodies
- Do not forget about the larks, which are known firsthand from morning singing. They toosmall - a little more sparrows.
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Orioles are very bright: completely yellow with dark wings. They sing, whistle and chirp. When they are afraid and worried, they are able to make sounds that are very unpleasant for human hearing, for which they received the name forest cats.
- Robins are small rounded birds with a reddish breast, but they sing loudly and beautifully. And they got their name robins among the people not because of the color, but just because of the singing, since in Russia the melodic ringing was called raspberry before.
- But the mockingbird is generally called that, because he knows how to imitate other people's voices, as if laughing at others. So, he can imitate about 30 species of birds and some animals. Of course, we are talking about similar singing and other sounds. But it also has its own unique melody. Like the nightingale, it usually sings at night.
The goldfinch stands out for its bright appearance, and is also often kept in captivity by people, as it is quickly mastered and becomes tame
Siskin also gets used to captivity with ease, but is more common in wild spaces and forests
Finch sings beautifully, belongs to granivorous
And the list does not end there, as there are a great many songbirds, famous and not so famous.
Singing birds from distant lands
Feathers that sing are everywhere, even in the tropics of Africa or South America. The hotter the climate, the brighter they tend to look, as can be seen from numerous photos. Singing birds in these parts are also not uncommon. Butresearchers have proven one interesting fact: birds of tropical latitudes sing in a lower voice than counterparts from a temperate climate with higher frequencies. This is explained by the fact that in the tropics there is very dense vegetation, and there are much more sounds, since numerous insects of hot impenetrable forests also arrange chants. Therefore, high-frequency sounds are simply muffled and have poorer permeability due to obstacles in the form of thick grass and trees.
Evolutionary birds have only one way left to be heard by their brethren - to communicate at low frequencies, which are able to travel much further through vegetation and compete with the sounds of insects.
Interesting facts
- Syrinx is the vocal apparatus of birds. It is located in the lower part of the larynx. In humans, for example, it is, on the contrary, at the top.
- Cranes and swans also make sounds, but they are very low, unlike the singing of the nightingale and other singing birds. This is explained by a very long trachea - about 1 meter.
- The size of the birds also affects the pitch of the voice. The smaller, the higher the sound of the melody and, conversely, the more, the lower the voice.
- And some of the birds don't sing at all because they don't have a syrinx. For example, white stork and pelican.
- Each species of birds has its own melody, with the help of which it is easier for them to find representatives of the opposite sex during mating games among the many songs and sounds of other species.
- As mentioned above, many birds have a vocal apparatus, but thosethose who do not emit melodious melodies also communicate with each other in a certain way. For example, crows do not sing, but they can croak, gulls can scream, and ducks can quack.
- Due to the fact that many birds have a voice, some of them can even remember and reproduce human speech (parrots, crows, etc.).
