Birds are very beautiful creatures. It is known that most of the birds are songbirds. And these are 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 know how to sing with melodies.
Reasons for singing
Why do birds sing and make sounds? Of course, this sounds beautiful, pleasing our human hearing, but the reasons are due to purely biological factors. Below are only the main ones.
- Designation of its territory. Yes, birds also have things that they need to set aside and protect their place, and this can be done by singing. So they can be said to protect their nests, cubs and places with food. After all, probably, everyone noticed how little birds were singing, quickly jumping from branch to branch? So they designate their branch (or several trees). They can sing at least all day this way.
- Another important reason is that the male so attracts the attention of the female. He has many competitors, so it is important to try to win attention with your beloved: with your singing and also with color, bird dancing and courtship.
- Sounds are also used for communication. Specifically, with invocation signals one bird can call another, or the calves call their parents. This is often used in schools, so as not to fend off, and also in forests, where it is difficult to see your own, but you can hear it by sound. As a rule, call signals differ slightly from singing.
Singing birds - who are they?
There are a number of common symptoms. Songbirds are usually land birds. Also, most of them build nests in the form of a bowl or basket. Regardless of size, many singing birds are insectivorous.
Now consider some types in more detail.
Famous singing birds
The list of birds, as already mentioned, is very long. Let's move on to the names of the singing birds, best known in our open spaces in a temperate climate.
- The Nightingale is such a modest, soft bird that everyone knows about, but few have heard his songs. Despite his nondescript appearance, he makes the most incredible sounds: starting from melodic rhythms, ending with a whistle. And all this can be heard, usually at night and at dawn.
- Blackbirds seem to play flutes when they sing. They are also usually very small in size. Moreover, the melodies can be sung by both hermits, well-known to all, and black representatives of the species.
- Do not forget about the larks, which are known firsthand from morning singing. They are also small - a little more than sparrows.
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Orioles are very bright: completely yellow with dark wings. They sing, whistle and tweet. When they are afraid and worried, they are capable of making very unpleasant sounds for human hearing, for which they are called forest cats.
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Zaryanka is a small rounded bird with a reddish-colored breast, but they sing loudly and beautifully. And they did not get the name robins among the people because of their color, but just because of singing, since in Russia they called melodic ringing before raspberry.
- But a mockingbird is generally called that because he knows how to imitate other people's voices, as if mocking 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 he has his own unique melody. Like the nightingale, usually sings at night.
- Goldfinch stands out for its bright appearance, and people often keep it in captivity, as it is quickly mastered and becomes tame.
- Siskin also gets used to lack of freedom with ease, however, it is more common in wild open spaces and in forests.
Chaffinch sings beautifully, belongs to the granivorous.
And the list does not end there, since there are a great many singing birds, famous and not very, great.
Singing birds from distant lands
Feathered birds who sing are everywhere, even in the tropics of Africa or South America. The hotter the climate, the more vivid the view, as you can see from the numerous photos. Singing birds in these parts are also not uncommon. But the researchers proved one interesting fact: feathered 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 multiple insects of hot impenetrable forests arrange chants. Therefore, high-frequency sounds are simply muffled and have a worse passability due to obstacles in the form of thick grass and trees.
Birds evolutionarily only had one way out so that their brethren could hear them - to communicate at low frequencies, which can go much further among the vegetation and compete with the sounds of insects.
