| The
forests of
Australia's
east coast are home to one of the world's most remarkable singers: the
Eastern Whipbird (Psophodes olivaceus).
Male and female whipbirds sing highly coordinated
vocal duets. The male begins the duet with a piercing whistle and a
loud "whip crack". The female terminates the duet with two or three
quick whistled notes. Together with my colleague Amy Rogers of the
University of Melbourne, I conducted a comparison of male and female
throughout eastern Australia. We found a remarkable pattern: males
sound highly similar throughout Australia whereas females sound
remarkably different from one place to the next. Listen to recordings
of male and female eastern whipbirds by clicking on the sound
spectrograms in the map below. You can read a journal article about
this research by clicking this link: Mennill
&
Rogers (2006) Whip it good! Geographic consistency in male songs and
variability in female songs of the duetting eastern whipbird, Psophodes olivaceus. Journal of
Avian Biology 37:93-100. |
|
Eastern Whipbird photograph
by
David Paul
|
