Variation in Avian Vocalizations during the Non-Breeding Season in Response to Traffic Noise

Abstract

Low-frequency traffic noise that leads to acoustic masking of vocalizations may cause birds to alter the frequencies or other components of their vocalizations in order to be heard by conspecifics and others. Altering parts of a vocalization may result in poorer vocal performance or the message contained in the vocalization being received incorrectly. During the winters of 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, we recorded and measured the 'chick-a-dee' call of Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) and the 'po-ta-to-chip' call of American Goldfinches (Spinus tristis) to determine whether components of the calls produced in areas of high traffic noise and low traffic noise differed in any way. We found that both chickadee and goldfinch calls had higher minimum frequencies in areas with high traffic-noise than in low traffic-noise areas. The maximum frequencies showed no differences in either species' calls. This suggests that chickadees and goldfinches alter the part of their calls that are acoustically masked by traffic noise in effort to better transmit the vocalization. These differences suggest that increasing anthropogenic noise may influence avian communication and that noise management should be included in conservation planning.

Interspecific comparison of traffic noise effects on dove coo transmission in urban environments

“…ref. 28 ), the maximum frequency of our traffic noise (1202.7 Hz) was lower than that (2,556 Hz) found in high traffic sites (near interstate highway I-80 in North America). This might be because we chose to investigate the frequency range below 2 kHz by analysing at a sampling rate of 4 kHz.…”

The effect of vessel noise on humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, communication behaviour

“…A common response of birds is to increase, (e.g. Oden et al, 2015) or decrease (e.g. Potvin et al, 2014), the frequency of their songs or calls in response to anthropogenic noise to reduce the likelihood of signal masking.…”

“…Birds have been shown to adjust the source level of their vocal sounds (Brumm, 2004;Lowry et al, 2012), the frequency of their vocal sounds (Huffeldt et al, 2013;Oden et al, 2015;Potvin et al, 2011;Verzijden et al, 2010) and the duration of the signal (Gough et al, 2014;Leon et al, 2014;Slabbekoorn & den Boer-Visser, 2006) in high urban noise. However, the degree to which a signal is plastic is constrained by physiological, for example metabolic (as reviewed in Zollinger & Brumm, 2015), and anatomical (e.g.…”

Temporal and spatial variation of a winter soundscape in south-central Alaska

“…Merchant et al (2015) also pointed out that there are significant differences in the sensitivity between microphones. The microphones we used were the standard microphones included with our SM2s that have been used in other published soundscape studies (Gage and Axel 2014;Sueur et al 2014;Tucker et al 2014;Oden et al 2015;Pieretti et al 2015). Although it is possible that sounds during our study could have occurred below and above this frequency range, as well as outside the range of detection by our microphones, the sounds we were able to detect provide a good description of the winter soundscape within this threshold range in KENWR.…”