Behavioural responses of male ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus, L.) to playbacks of drumming displays

Abstract

Birds use a variety of sounds in their courtship displays, but the majority of behavioural studies have focused on vocalizations. In contrast, little is known about how non‐vocal sounds, or sonations, are used, even though many avian species produce them. The ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) is a useful species to examine non‐vocal sounds because they lack vocal components in their courtship and rely on a non‐vocal sound to attract mates and defend their territory. Their courtship display, known as “drumming,” is created by the wings, and the number of pulses and speed (pulse rate) varies significantly among males. Anecdotal evidence suggested that males can affect the drumming behaviour of neighbouring males in drumming “duels” in an analogous way to song contests. Here, we test whether males do respond to the playback of drumming sounds of an unfamiliar male. Using a portable speaker system, we played recordings of drumming displays to males that were actively drumming themselves. Throughout each playback, we recorded the drumming behaviour of target males so that we could assess whether drumming activity changes following a playback as well as whether males change the speed of their display. Overall, male grouse were equally likely to approach the speaker or continue drumming following a playback. For those males that continued drumming, their drumming pulse rate was significantly faster following playbacks, but they drummed less often. These results indicate that male ruffed grouse do respond to drumming sounds, but the specific response differs among males. Because the differential response was not related to colour phase or whether a male was drumming in proximity to other males, we suggest that the response of individuals likely varies with other traits, such as hormone levels or behavioural syndrome.

Biomechanics of the peafowl’s crest reveals frequencies tuned to social displays

“…Peahens also perform a tail-rattling display at 25–29 Hz in a variety of contexts [20], suggesting that feather vibrations might serve other communicative functions as well. Three studies have found that birds respond behaviorally to playbacks of low frequency sound generated by social displays: peafowl detect the infrasound (< 20 Hz) component of train-rattling and wing-shaking recordings [19]; male houbara bustards ( Chlamydotis undulata undulata ) respond to low frequency (40–54 Hz) boom vocalizations [22]; and male ruffed grouse ( Bonasa umbellus ) respond to 45 ± 6 Hz wing beating “drumming” displays [23]. Several other studies have also measured the behavioral response of birds to amplitude-modulated low repetition rate broad-band pulses, which are similar to the mechanical sounds associated with peacock train-rattling; the results of these studies showed that birds from three different families can detect such sounds with repetition rates < 40 Hz [24–26].…”

Adaptive hypotheses on the evolution of non-vocal communication sounds in birds

“…There are a number of suggestions that sonations and vocalizations trade off. Ruffed Grouse defend their territory with a loud wing drumming (18), and are said to have a nearly non-existent syrinx. Smithornis broadbills likewise defend territories with wing sounds (3), and reportedly have few vocalizations and a puny syrinx (19).…”

Hissing of geese: caller identity encoded in a non-vocal acoustic signal

“…This represents most studied systems, but sounds of terrestrial vertebrates are not only produced in the larynx or syrinx. Several avian species are known to produce non-syrinx sounds, which can be produced by instrumental feathers (Murray, Zeil & Magrath, 2017), beak drumming (Budka et al, 2018;Dodenhoff, Stark & Johnson, 2001), wings beating (Garcia et al, 2012;O'Neil, Charrier & Iwaniuk, 2018), the rattling of mandibles (Eda-Fujiwara et al, 2004), step dances (Ota, Gahr & Soma, 2017) or else, by using tools (Heinsohn et al, 2017).…”