Description
Listen carefully early in the morning… It thunders and reverberates with birdsong. For us humans, birdsong is something to savor. For birds, all that whistling is about two things: war and peace. THE BATTLES: Why war and peace? One reason for male birds to sing is to defend their territory from rivals. With much of their whistling, they fight their competitors nonviolently in the spring. They sing: "Here I am!", "Go away or I'll attack you!", "I'm the strongest!" or even better: "I'm the boss!" THE CHOIRS: The other reason revolves around peace, around love. In spring, male birds start to get itchy. They abandon all caution and sing at the top of their lungs. The longer the male sings, the greater the chance that a female will pass by and take the time to examine her potential mate. THE SINGERS: Have you noticed that it's only the males up here? Because indeed, only the males sing. Females don't have a territory to defend and don't need to woo the males. There's one exception: the robin. Mrs. Robin does sing, but only in autumn and winter when she defends her own territory just as fiercely as the males. THE IMITATORS: Sometimes it doesn't stop at just singing. Some birds are also brilliant imitators. Starlings, for example, imitate the sounds of telephones and alarm systems. There are starlings at Rotterdam Central Station that imitate train sounds. But the master imitator is the Australian lyrebird. You name it, this bird can do it.
