Talk:Bird vocalization

Cortical-basal ganglia circuit
The cortical nuclei involved have been more precisely delineated in "Covert skill learning in a cortical-basal ganglia circuit" by Charlesworth et al. in Nature 486, 251 from 2012-06-14 showing that learning of excellence (singing with a higher fundamental frequency) may happen without motoric realisation. Robert Eriksens (talk) 19:44, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Subheadings
Could this page not be broken down into sub-headings? it is a little confusing at the moment

Cleanup
I agree about the subheadings, and I also think it needs more from the behavioral side of ornithology, some birds with famous songs, duets, loud songs, etc. &mdash;JerryFriedman 00:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Could someone record a starling singing?
The starling image is terrific. Could someone record a starling singing so the image could have an associated audio clip? --Jtir 19:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 * You can use the template to make audio file requests. You could also place this on the starling page. This page should definitely have links to relevant songs throughout, not just a commons link at the end. Richard001 06:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * There are some starling sounds on Freesound. Shyamal 09:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Misdirected link
Is there any reason the 'music' link in the introduction redirects to Avril Lavigne? 144.124.16.28 09:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC) On a second look a lot of the links in the introduction seem biased. For example 'some people' redirects to an article on insanity (implying that anyone who considers birdsong music is insane) and 'cult movements' redirects to hippies.
 * Yikes! That is some badly missed vandalism. The whole intro was replaced with nonsense really. Thanks for pointing that out. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  11:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Move to Bird vocalization
A move of this page to Bird vocalization is under discussion on the bird project talk page. This article would include material on bird call, song, behavioural aspects, learning, mimicry, call semantics, sonograms, use of calls in systematics, acoustic ecology etcetera. Comments here or on the bird project talk page are welcome. Shyamal 03:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The article has now been upgraded to be more suitable for the title of bird vocalization, but the move seems to be rather tricky with a large number of incoming links, a disambiguation page for bird song etc. So leaving it as is for now. Shyamal 15:19, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

NWF article
I saw an article in the National Wildlife Federation magazine about bird song, specifically about the groups of birds that learn their song and aren't born knowing it, and thought the information might be useful to this article. Here's a link to the article if anyone's interested:. I think it would also provide a source for the dialect fact. --Jude. 18:25, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

messed-up sentence
I can't tell what this means (from "Learning"). Someone who knows, please fix it.
 * The early song is "plastic" and variable and it takes two or three months to and the song is perfect and non-varying when the bird becomes sexually mature.'

On the other hand, in "Anatomy" I took a guess that "it" in the following sentence meant "the bird" (not "the syrinx"):
 * It controls the pitch by changing the tension on the membranes and controls both pitch and volume by changing the force of exhalation.

&mdash;JerryFriedman 06:22, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I am responsible for the first bit and hopefully it is now resolved. Shyamal 06:55, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, those editing errors that are invisible to the editor. I have generated many of them myself.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 21:54, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Another sentence with ambiguous diction confounds me: "Many hypotheses have been made on the functions of vocal mimicry including suggestions that they may be involved in sexual selection by acting as an indicator of fitness, help brood parasites, or protect against predation, but strong support is lacking for any function.[30]" In particular I suspect helping brood parasites wouldn't be the goal of birds (or our maker). If a bird could banish parasites with vocalizations that would be of interest. Warding off unsuspecting birds with vocalizations meant to steer them clear of local parasites would seem generally unlikely, also exceeding intended scope (implied by context). Jeffreagan (talk) 13:55, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

learning and neurophysiology section
I just added some new content to the Learning and Neurophysiology sections. The new content highlights more recent findings and models for birdsong learning. I also switched the order of these two sections to enhance the logical flow of the information, and changed the name of the Neurophysiology section to Neuroanatomy in order to make the section name more rightly fit the content found within it. I also cleaned up and contributed additional content to the Auditory Feedback section. Due to inadequate sources and discussion of speculative subjects that lacked scientific vigor, I moved the Bird Language section further down in the article, and deleted the last paragraph in the section, which lacked citations and evidence. G. Baum, Cornell University 21:56, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I just cleaned up both of these sections, adding a little and taking away a little. Hopefully it's less scattered (there was a lot of information for learning in the neurophysiology section). Let me know what you think. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agutwin (talk • contribs) 21:28, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I added a little more to the auditory feedback section, and moved it to a subheading off of learning. I think that it shouldn't be it's own heading because it is so tied to the learning section, also it makes everything a little more organized to have it this way. Agutwin (talk) 18:59, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I dont understand how I got here, but why and how? EMC1213 (talk) 19:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Morse Code
Bird calls have also had Morse code used to notate them, but apparently we are not allowed to mention that. Jidanni (talk) 02:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It needs a reliable reference WP:RS. It must be dots and dashes to indicate timing rather than the Morse code encoding to send messages. Shyamal (talk) 03:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

British Library bird songs
'British Library's archive of bird sounds representing more than 8,000 species.' Yes, but could someone (tm) locate the page? The link gives a four-oh-four. 91.152.87.120 (talk) 17:55, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Brain and Language special issue
The journal Brain and Language just put out a special issue on birdsong: Vol. 115, No. 1. The (1.5-page) introduction might be a nice reference for here; it also lists some other review articles that are good overviews. If anyone can't access it, feel free to contact me and I can e-mail pdfs. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 12:16, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Mirror neurons
Is it really appropriate to have a long section on mirror neurons here based exclusively on Prather's research? There are about ten high-profile research groups studying various aspects of the neuroscience of bird vocalization and it would seem unwieldy to have a 7-paragraph of each group's research, but biased to only include such a long summary for some of them.

Ionocube (talk) 08:33, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

TICS review
Here's another helpful source: r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 14:54, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

last sentences of "bird language" don't really fit
"For example, ravens mobbing a hawk or owl in a tree will clump around the predator in a loose ball, calling and diving. If the ravens rise off the tree and fly higher, the predator was a hawk and has flown up to escape, as is typical of hawks. If the ravens drop out of the tree and fly low and away, the predator was an owl and has dropped low off its perch to escape, as is typical of owls.[44]" -- this doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the "bird" language section. Of course, it's an interesting factoid about alarm, but how is it language? (And not just two responses that we can interpret as having different causes) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.160.125.105 (talk) 07:54, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Should article mention effects on human beings?
The Radio Four programme All in the Mind discussed, on an edition broadcast in November 2012, the psychological effects that bird song had on human beings. Does any one think this is a topic worth discussion in this article? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 16:34, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Connection to Contact Calling
The page on contact calling links the phenomenon to birds however there is not much if anything on this page dealing with birds using vocalization in order to keep in contact with each other during foraging and the like (I only discovered this page as I was doing a search to find out why the birds around me at a local gardens were doing a continuous call - response cycle - of coarse my enquiry went unanswered until I found the contact calling page). Felt this worth a mention although I am not qualified to do the actual edit myself. Norlesh (talk) 08:40, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Bird song and music
The sentence "This claim has been refuted by Sotorrio (Tone Spectra), who has shown that birds are not selecting scale tones from a myriad of tonal possibilities, but are filtering out and reinforcing the available set of overtones from the fundamental tones of their vocal cords." needs references. In general this subsection is lacking many recent advances made on musicality of bird song. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arayasalas (talk • contribs) 17:07, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

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Audio files

 * a large number of audio files have been added to this article without any discussion. It is not usual to have more than a very few media files in an article. There is no consensus for the extended sequence of additions. I would oppose having more than perhaps two or three files, carefully chosen to illustrate the diversity of vocalisations. We certainly should not be adding one file after another without discussion and agreement on the right approach for this article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:44, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

{{Chiswick Chap I do not know how to initiate that. The recordings I have added I believe enhance the discussion of bird song. Consistency for me is a necessary evil. The most diverse group of animals that communicate with song and there are only a couple of samples does not make illustrate anything. There are four specific groups of animals in which we see the evolution of communication: the crickets and cicadas, frogs and toads, birds and finally whales. The Whales and Crickets/Cicadas have a bounty of sound samples to help enhance the article. But Birds and frogs one has maybe one or two samples? Excuse me. Really? The Bird vocalization article looks at a number of items. One it looks at how birds learn (example of blue jay chick fits). There is discussion of mimicry which I included two very good examples (the brown thrasher song is over 5 minutes illustrating the repertoire of mimicked calls. The eastern pewee has a very simple articulated repetition of phrases but the note ascends and descends from a grounding base note.  It is a sound that readers and listeners will pick up. The chickadee and tit are mentioned in the article and I have chosen examples to illustrate.  I understand what you mean and I agree.  But I disagree with you that one or two do the trick.  Mimicry especially deserves to be served better in terms of examples because there are few other creatures in the animal world that are capable of this process.  I have no problem with discussing but I really didn't know how to initiate that.  Since I had no issues regarding my additions to the Timeline of the formation of the Universe (I completely revamped that whole section) I didn't think there would be an issue here. I'm not being willy nilly about the additional sound selections. Because I am in the process of organizing a very large personal file of birdsong with the purposes of making it more useful to me as a guide in animal communication. Since the article is an audio-based one (talking about bird vocalization after all) shouldn't it reflect that. I did proper analysis on all the selections. The Blue Turaco I could see being lopped off, but the two examples that are used the Australian Raven and the Blackbird really don't cut the mustard. The Blackbird recording isn't a very good sounding recording (the author of the file seems to have tried to hard to isolate the bird so that the sound has a tinny quality). The Australian Raven is too quick. The samples I have included have length so one can get a full appreciation of the call. The Nightingale and Brown Thrasher calls are longer than 3 min. So please if you wish to discuss go for it. I just think at present an article that is supposed to be about bird vocalization doesn't vocalize (forgive). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davros69999 (talk • contribs) 14:03, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Removal of sorted list of sources
To achieve the sorted list of sources for this article seen in the prior version of this article, it was necessary to add sfn templates to references in the article. The article previously had no consistent citation style, so it seemed to me to be a beneficial upgrade to the article. However, the sorted list has been removed from the article and unfortunately also removed large numbers of other citation corrections and enhancements unrelated to the sources sorting improvement. My view is that the quality of the article has been significantly damaged but the editor doing the revert does have a reasonable point of view that perhaps consensus should have been reached prior to the upgrade. If anyone thinks the article is better off without the sorted list of sources, or has other objections to the change, please comment. J JMesserly (talk) 03:34, 6 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The article does consistently use inline citations. You changed that without discussion or consensus, in plain disagreement with WP:CITEVAR. There is no need that the citations be alphabetically sorted. MrOllie (talk) 03:57, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Why is the article is better with the sorted list of sources removed? The citations are voluminous and were in the the prior version of this article better organized for ease of lookup. J JMesserly (talk) 04:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I did not 'remove' a list of sources, I returned it to the stable format. I disagree that alphabetizing sources is better organization, and I disagree that moving away from inline citations represents an improvement to the article. MrOllie (talk) 04:33, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I no longer see the sorted list of sources. Why is that an improvement for readers?  J JMesserly (talk) 04:52, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ordering citations by first use - as the inline citation system does automatically, is extremely common and is just as valid a way to sort the list. MrOllie (talk) 04:55, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, lots of practices are commonly used. That doesn't make them more helpful to readers.  Why is order of occurrence  better than an alphabetized bibliography?  That is common practice in books, particularly for the fields discussed in this article. J JMesserly (talk) 04:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Because order of occurrence is used by the inline citation style, which has many organizational and practical benefits in the Mediawiki software, including being used by the visual editor's autofill citations. - MrOllie (talk) 05:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So readers should see a jumbled mass of citations for some technical benefit of the software? I am unclear how this makes the Bird vocalization article better for readers.J JMesserly (talk) 05:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What works in books doesn't necessarily work on a website. Here, the sfn style introduces an extra layer of indirection. A reader's typical mode of getting further information, clicking a hyperlink, now takes them to a second hyperlink. It's a mild but pervasive detriment. Benefits or downsides of any particular citation style aside, the community practice is not to change them unilaterally. If there are inconsistencies amid a clear preference for one style (e.g., mostly cite journal-style templates but a few done manually to very similar appearance), then those inconsistencies should be brought in line with the article's prevailing standard. Changing everything to an entirely different standard is bad practice. This is the most obvious application of WP:CITEVAR that I can recall seeing. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 23:07, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That issue is a moot point.  I already stated to both you and Mr. Ollie he had a fair point in that regard.
 * The question posed is, is the question whether the reader better off with a sorted list of sources for the article or not.  Many other major articles in the biological sciences, eg GA-Class Botany have transitioned to this reference asset.  Bird vocalization would benefit from such a list. I look forward to what contributors to this and other bird related articles think about the question, but because the talk page is infrequently edited, I expect this discussion will require an extensive period.  J JMesserly (talk) 00:45, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Botany has used that style for at least a decade. Ecology, also a GA, does not use it at all. Of the other natural-sciences Good articles, Anatomy doesn't. Nor do Adrenal gland, Ampullae of Lorenzini, Axillary arch, Brain, Cerebrospinal fluid, Cranial nerves, Ear... Or, further down the list, Last universal common ancestor, Punctuated equilibrium, Genetically modified organism, RNA... It's obviously not obligatory, which makes sense, as whatever benefits it might bring also come with downsides (indirection, extra scroll length, etc.) so that it won't be to everyone's taste. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 13:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I booted it over to WP:birds.  If they have a preference one way or another, I will go along with that.  Fair enough?  J JMesserly (talk) 20:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Why not just incorporate the miscellaneous fixes and improvements within the individual items into the current version? That would make the article better than it is now. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 21:15, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What- move 140 refs inline and then if the WP:Birds community says they like the sorted version throw that version away? No thank you.  There are other articles to edit.  If you want to, fine, but I am patient.  I have to wait ages on the Holodomor article due to the contentious relationships amongst contributors there.  Those other painfully bad errors have been there for years.  A few more weeks won't hurt and none except for the lost link on bird vocalization notation were particularly egregious. J JMesserly (talk) 21:35, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If the item-by-item fixes aren't important enough to incorporate, then the whole business just sounds like change for the sake of change. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 04:47, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * They are important but as far as I am concerned can wait for enough weeks to know what the community of regular bird contributor editors prefer regarding the sorted list. If they want them unsorted, then of course I will make them inline.  As I said you are welcome to read my edit and transfer the voluminous fixes to inline form, but it may well just be tossed if the community likes the sorted list style.  I have a preference but I was wrong not to consult the community first.  Frankly I had no idea it would be so controversial.  J JMesserly (talk) 06:33, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Was the lost link on bird vocalization notation this? XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:07, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes indeed it is. J JMesserly (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * OK. I don't think that URL should be included in the cite book for that book, since it's not a link to a copy of the book, but rather to a page that talks about it and two other references. But it could maybe be its own footnote. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:44, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The trouble is that it is a rare book and illustrates the principle discussed. I don't recall the other references to the book but for the bird vocalization illustration cite- its not the same page?  Well ok if you don't put the cite info with the url for the notation footnote, no one will see the information.  A detail which probably not amuse you for this situation is that one sfn practice I have seen is to place page links to Google books preview pages in the loc field or page= field of the sfn.   J JMesserly (talk) 06:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * A Google Books link is proprietary and unreliable, in that they don't always make the same pages available and nobody can predict which pages will actually appear in the preview, but it is at least a link to a copy of the book, which is what the  field in the template is supposed to be used for. A web page that quotes the book, says that it is out of print and suggests trying to find it secondhand is a separate source in its own right. I think this makes the information available while also using the templates appropriately. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 13:22, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I have other misgivings about hard links in general. But I recognize it is the only way for large numbers of users to check a citation.
 * I did not know that such google books links were unstable. Are you sure about that?  J JMesserly (talk) 23:50, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Your personal opinion about what url is properly used for is contradicted by WP:GBOOKS. See its example of how to link to specific pages. You will find this as one of the examples:
 * If you read the "supposed to be used for" passage you linked to, you will see that it contradicts your understanding of proper usage.
 * J JMesserly (talk) 21:13, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't. A link to a page that provides a quote and surrounding commentary is not a link to a specific page of a book. It's a source in its own right. See WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Your way of including the URL gave credit to Saunders for the writing of Jones and Tufte. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 23:34, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't. A link to a page that provides a quote and surrounding commentary is not a link to a specific page of a book. It's a source in its own right. See WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Your way of including the URL gave credit to Saunders for the writing of Jones and Tufte. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 23:34, 21 March 2023 (UTC)