A comparison of the diurnal song of the Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) between the non-breeding season in The Gambia, West Africa and the breeding season in Europe
“…The common nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), a common migratory bird in Berlin, was chosen as object of investigation. In Europe Luscinia megarhynchos sings after arrival around mid April until late June (Kipper et al 2016). Recordings, which met the following criteria were categorised as correctly identified as Luscinia megarhynchos and validated manually:…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…One reason for this could be that nightingale calls have a smaller variability than songs and therefore are better recognized. Kipper et al (2015) found only three distinct call types and measured 27 different acoustic variables per call in their study on male song responses to either male or female call playbacks in nightingales. In contrast, male nightingale song comprises of a large song type repertoire (e.g.…”
Acoustic pattern recognition methods introduce new perspectives for species identification, biodiversity monitoring and data validation in citizen science but are rarely evaluated in real world scenarios. In this case study we analysed the performance of a machine learning algorithm for automated bird identification to reliably identify common nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos) in field recordings taken by users of the smartphone app Naturblick. We found that the performance of the automated identification tool was overall robust in our selected recordings. Although most of the recordings had a relatively low confidence score, a large proportion of the recordings were identified correctly.
“…The common nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), a common migratory bird in Berlin, was chosen as object of investigation. In Europe Luscinia megarhynchos sings after arrival around mid April until late June (Kipper et al 2016). Recordings, which met the following criteria were categorised as correctly identified as Luscinia megarhynchos and validated manually:…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…One reason for this could be that nightingale calls have a smaller variability than songs and therefore are better recognized. Kipper et al (2015) found only three distinct call types and measured 27 different acoustic variables per call in their study on male song responses to either male or female call playbacks in nightingales. In contrast, male nightingale song comprises of a large song type repertoire (e.g.…”
Acoustic pattern recognition methods introduce new perspectives for species identification, biodiversity monitoring and data validation in citizen science but are rarely evaluated in real world scenarios. In this case study we analysed the performance of a machine learning algorithm for automated bird identification to reliably identify common nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos) in field recordings taken by users of the smartphone app Naturblick. We found that the performance of the automated identification tool was overall robust in our selected recordings. Although most of the recordings had a relatively low confidence score, a large proportion of the recordings were identified correctly.
“…Other recent studies have investigated migratory species that sing in their non‐breeding overwintering areas (Kipper et al . ), behaviour that clearly is not aligned with traditional views of birdsong. Yet the standard definitions used in the literature still tend to reflect the experience of biologists in north‐temperate regions, or focus on a few specific functions:Generally, calls are short, simple and produced by both sexes at any time, whereas songs are long, complex and produced only by males in the breeding season.Song refers primarily to the vocal displays of territorial male birds.…”
mentioning
confidence: 89%
“…It is now widely recognized that, particularly in the southern hemisphere and in tropical regions, vocalizations which may be categorized as 'song' are often not restricted to male birds only (Riebel 2003, Slater & Mann 2004 and may also be produced throughout the year (Voigt et al 2006, Kirschel et al 2011) rather than being limited to the breeding season. Other recent studies have investigated migratory species that sing in their non-breeding overwintering areas (Kipper et al 2017), behaviour that clearly is not aligned with traditional views of birdsong. Yet the standard definitions used in the literature still tend to reflect the experience of biologists in north-temperate regions, or focus on a few specific functions:…”
“…In long-distance migrants, the plastic song phase normally happens while the birds are in their winter quarters and it has been hypothesized that they may learn new songs during this period [ 23 , 24 ]. One of the first to suggest such song learning in tropical winter quarters was the ornithologist Françoise Dowsett-Lemaire, who noticed potential imitations of vocalizations from African resident species in the songs of marsh warblers ( Acrocephalus palustris ) recorded in Europe [ 25 ].…”
Territoriality is a common pattern of space use in animals that has fundamental consequences for ecological processes. In the tropics, all-year resident songbirds usually hold territories throughout the year, whereas most all-year resident temperate species are territorial only during the breeding season. In long-distance migrants, however, the situation is mostly unexplored. Here, we report findings from a Palaearctic–African migrant, the thrush nightingale
Luscinia luscina
. We found that only a fraction of the males was territorial in their East African winter quarters and that this was related to the stage of their song development. Individuals with full song were territorial towards other full songsters, but not towards birds that sang plastic song (i.e. an earlier stage of song development). Plastic singers were not territorial towards full songsters and often settled closely to territorial males. We suggest that territoriality of thrush nightingales in the winter quarters may be a by-product of rising testosterone levels that trigger song crystallization. Collectively, our study indicates that changes in territoriality can occur rapidly, giving rise to shifting proportions of territorial and non-territorial individuals in a population, which may lead to complex dynamics in settlement patterns and resulting ecological interactions.
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