Awakening to the morning cacophony, I wondered: How do birds chirp? Are the sounds whistles? (Not like we do, but more like a penny whistle.) Are they vibrations of some tissue, like pulling apart the opening of an inflated balloon? (Seems that would accound for a chicken’s cluck.) Do they have vocal chords? Or are they in fact secret clockwork devices with amplifiers and speakers to fool us into thinking they’er not listening to us?
I think it is true to say that the birds aren’t whistling, but screaming - the calls are made by vibrating tissues similar to vocal chords.
hope this helps
Unlike mammals, a bird’s vocal apparatus is not located in the throat (larynx), but consists of an entirely different organ, the syrinx, which is located deep in the chest, where the trachea forks into the bronchi that lead to the lungs. A decapitated chicken is still able to squawk vigorously.
See here
The sometimes-elaborate musculature of the syrinx is an important character in bird classification, especially among the songbirds (passerines).
That was another possibility I thought of as I lay there; but by the time I logged on, I’d forgotten about it.
Thanks for the answers!
Maybe it’s just me and if I do say so myself, there seems something terribly evocative about the phrase “the birds aren’t whistling, but screaming” - I think I’ll file this away in my ‘ideas’ store for possible future use, maybe as the basis of a story.
Since birds don’t have lips, how do they make consonant sounds? For example:
Even ventriloquists have a hard time with the “b” sound and you can always see them move their lips on that sound. Many birds have songs which we identify with certain words, such as the white-throated sparrow’s “Miss Peabody,” the Carolina Wren’s “teacher,” etc. I suspect their songs really don’t have the consonant sounds, but our brains just hear the sounds that sound similar to ones we know.
Try living with talking parrots. It takes some getting used to, living with an animal that can speak your language. Breakfast can go like this:
eggs
No, dear, eat your seeds
eggs
Later…
EGGS
Look, this is MY breakfast –
EGGS! EGGS! EGGS!(much flapping and jumping about on perch, loose feathers flying about)
Actually, my current talker mostly says “Pretty bird”. It’s reasonably distinct. I can’t say that without all sorts of lip motion, but he can. Darn if I know how. Maybe they can do some of it with tongue and soft tissue motion. Have also heard words like “junior” and “love you” out of mine. Other birds I’ve know have quite clearly said “pepper”, “help me”, and one could do a very fine impersonation of Curly Howard going “nyuk, nyuk, nyuk”
So even if it’s not obvious how they do it, they certainly do do it.
Parrots have thicker tongues, so they may be able to manipulate some consonantl sounds, but not the songbirds.
While I am not absolutely certain, I don’t believe that any of these sounds are made with the mouth, tongue, or throat. All these sounds are probably generated by the syrinx.
The sort of songbird calls that we percieve as consonants are often just chirps or modulated calls that are near the upper end of our range of hearing.
In the case of the yellowhammer though, it doesn’t really sound like ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’, not really, any more than someone playing a scale on a piano sounds like someone singing ‘do re mi…’.
More than chirps or calls (songs, that is) are perceived by us with consonants. My Stokes book describes the white-throated sparrow’s song as: “sweet sweet Canada Canada Canada.” A different book, which is in my car (and I’m not sure which since I have several) describes the song as “Good morning, Miss Peabody.” These songs are open to interpretation as to what the birds are actually singing, which indicates to me that no consonants at all are actually expressed. Many warblers have songs with variations of “sweet, sweet, sweet,” but described in some books as “tseet, tseet, tseet,” or “Zweet, zweet, zweet.” Again, the consonant sounds depend upon which book you refer to.
It is worth noting, however, that that phrase represents the cadence of the call, not the actual vocalization. Same for the “Good Morning Miss Peabody” thing.
You can listen to the white-throated sparrow’s song here (assuming you have RealPlayer, anyway) and hear for yourself that it really sounds nothing at all like the actual phrases.