birds

Ep 008: Bird Voices with Dr. Anna Pidgeon (2-part episode!)

Dr. Anna Pidgeon with binoculars in tow (photo by forestandwildlifeecology.wisc.edu)

In these episodes, we answer questions like “how and why do birds sing?” and learn how birds adapt their calls and songs adapt to their habitats, and so much more with our bird voices expert, Dr. Anna Pidgeon, a researcher and professor at UW-Madison!

Check out Dr. Anna Pidgeon’s work here!

Subscribe to QuACK on Spotify, iHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app!

Transcription

Part One

Hey, and welcome to Questions Asked by Curious Kids, or QuACK, a podcast made by Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance. This is a podcast where we gather questions about nature from kids to be answered with a local expert. My name is Mickenzee. I'm an educator, and I'll be the host for this series. This episode I'll be interviewing Dr. Anna Pidgeon, a researcher and professor at UW Madison, and she'll be answering questions about bird voices.

This episode is going to be in two parts. In part one, we'll get to know Anna and talk about how and why birds communicate. And in the second part, we'll talk more about things like why bird species can sound alike or different, as well as how noise pollution can impact birds. I'm so excited for this one. Let's get started, shall we?

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Mickenzee: All right. Hey, Anna, welcome on. Before we get started with the kids' questions, could you tell us a little bit about what you do here at UW Madison? 

Anna: Sure. Hi, Mickenzee. I'm so happy to be here. Yeah, what I do at UW Madison, I'm a professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology, and I teach and I do research, and my teaching is all focused on birds, ornithology, and then a class where people learn to identify birds called Birds of Southern Wisconsin. And my research is mainly focused on birds as well. My research goal, overarching goal is to keep birds common, to learn about their habitat needs and do things that can help people make good decisions when they're thinking about changes to habitat. 

Mickenzee: That's so cool. This episode is all about bird voices. And how did you become an expert in bird voices?

Anna: Well, I became broadly interested in birds and other wildlife because I grew up in an area where there was a lot of natural habitat and therefore a lot of birds. And I've had a lot of training from college degree in wildlife management to master's and PhD, all focused on birds. And so along the way, I guess you could say I became an expert in a lot of things about birds.

Mickenzee: Oh, that I love to hear that. Okay, so all of our questions today were submitted by the third graders at Lincoln Elementary School here in Madison. First, this student wants to know how do birds make their songs and how do their bodies work? 

Sketch of a bird syrinx (graphic by Carolyn Byers)

Sketch of a human larynx (graphic by Carolyn Byers)

Anna: Yeah, well, birds bodies are different than mammal bodies. And as a matter of fact, from amphibian and reptile bodies as well, in that birds have a special organ, a vocal organ that's called a syrinx. And they also have a larynx, which we humans and other mammals and reptiles have, and which protects our trachea, or some people call it the airway or windpipe from food going down. But then birds at the base of their trachea just before it subdivides, it goes into the lungs. They have this organ called a syrinx. And when air leaves the lungs and the air sacs of birds, it goes across the syrinx and vibrates little membranes called tympanic membranes. And those vibrations are what we hear as bird vocalization songs and calls. 

Mickenzee: Whoa, that's so cool. Bird bodies are so different from ours now that we know how they make their songs. This student wants to know why do birds sing? 

Cedar Waxwings foraging in a group (photo by USFWS)

Male Yellow-headed Blackbird establishing territory (photo by USFWS)

Anna: Yeah, why do birds sing? Well, birds sing. And more broadly, they make other sounds. They make vocalizations to communicate with other birds or to express themselves, the same reason that we make sounds. Throughout the year, birds make a number of different sounds. For example, when they're foraging for food in the winter, many birds make what are called contact calls that help them stay together in a loose group. And if one of those foraging birds encounters, say, a potential predator like an owl, they may make a different kind of sound, an alarm call. And this notifies the group and then others in the group will also start making alarm calls. In birds that migrate, you often hear those that migrate during the day like geese and swans vocalizing as they're flying along. Cranes, too, are another example. And for birds that migrate at night, which are all of the small perching birds like thrushes and orioles and warblers and sparrows, they make what are called nocturnal flight calls while they're flying through the dark sky. And one more example: baby birds make food begging sounds when they're in the nest, and once they've fledged and they're learning how to find food, they're also still making those food begging sounds. So there are a lot of different sounds that birds make, and most of those that I've just talked about, they're called calls and this is to distinguish them from the sounds they make at the special time of year, when it's time to pair up with a mate and to raise young. And that's what we call the breeding season. And so the sounds that birds make in the breeding season are their songs. And you asked why they sing. Finally, I'm getting around to that. They sing to impress potential mates and to impress potential competitors, maybe to scare potential competitors. And then once they've selected a mate, they continue singing to keep the bond between them strong. So each bird species has particular habitat needs that are best for that species. And a bird works hard to establish a territory in the very best possible habitat for them. And they do this by competing with others, by singing. So the singing communicates things like, I'm a very powerful individual. And if it comes down to it, I can intimidate you out of my territory. And birds also want the very best possible mate in terms of the mate's ability to find food for babies. It's body's ability to ward off diseases, what we call immune function. And by listening to different individuals' songs, birds can hear differences that tell them which is the very best possible mate for them. So differences like how complex is the song or how loud is it? And it's not only the song I should say that conveys this information, but also like the brilliance or intensity of coloration, of feathers, their behaviors, etc. but so they sing to communicate their fitness, how good they are at what they do. 

Mickenzee: Wow. Birds are communicating so much. 

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If you're interested in learning more about bird voices or getting involved with our programs, please head to our website at swibirds.org.

From there you can find free lessons like Bird Call Bingo as well as check out our calendar for events like Birding by Ear. And this is only part one, so be sure to come back and check out part two with Dr. Anna Pidgeon. 

If you have a big nature question that you'd like to have answered, please have a grown up or teacher submit your question to info@swibirds.org with the title Questions for QuACK.

Make sure you include your grade and the school that you attend, so I can give you a shout out on the show. And thank you for tuning in and I hope you join us next time on QuACK!

Part 2

Hey, and welcome to Questions Asked by Curious Kids, or QuACK, a podcast made by Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance. This is a podcast where we gather questions about nature from kids to be answered with a local expert. My name is Mickenzee. I'm an educator, and I'll be the host for this series. This is part two of our Bird Voices episode with Dr. Anna Pidgeon, and she'll be answering questions about why bird species sound alike or different, as well as how noise pollution can impact birds.

And we'll be talking about so much more too. I cannot wait for us to get started. All right, here we go. 

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Mickenzee: These next questions are about the way birds sound. Why does it seem like small birds have high pitched voices? 

Sandhill Cranes calling in unison (photo by Arlene Koziol)

Tundra Swans having a chat (photo by Arlene Koziol)

Anna: Yeah, that's somewhat true, but not completely true. Small birds have a range of sounds. Some are higher and some lower. The amount of musculature or the amount of muscles that surround that special organ called the syrinx is what birds use to control the pitch of their voices. So some have more simple and fewer muscles, and some have more complex and just more muscles. And that gives them the ability to have, greater or a smaller range of sounds that they can make. And another thing that affects how high or low birds’ voices are is how long their trachea or their windpipe is. And in some birds, like swans and cranes, it can get to be really crazy long. And that communicates kind of how big their bodies are, because the longer a trachea, the more resonant or and also the lower the frequency of the sound. So there's a lot of different factors and why a bird might sound the way it does. 

Mickenzee: Right. And why. This one's a silly question I like. Why does some days birds sound like they're singing and some days they sound really squeaky? 

Anna: I'm really curious about the experience of the person who asked this question. I wonder if they're referring to a pet bird, or how would they know that one bird's voice changes from day to day. So some things that come to mind are that birds, just like people, have a range of sounds that they can make and have recognizable voices. And I wonder if the person was hearing different birds of the same species. Each of which had slightly different voices. Again, just like people have slightly different voices or other things that might cause a bird's voice to perhaps sound squeaky. Maybe if they're dealing with, for example, a virus. The way, humans voices change sometimes when they have a cold that's caused by a virus or sounds can be distorted by things like the wind and bouncing off of buildings. And that may be something that alters the way a certain birds voice sounds from day to day. So those are some ideas that I have about, why a birds voice may sound different from day to day.

Mickenzee: That's really interesting. This last question has a little bit of a story that goes with it. So the third graders noticed that when they were learning about different bird songs, that birds that live in a similar habitat sometimes sound similar, like an osprey and an eagle. And so they wondered, do bird calls adapt to their habitats?

The forest dwelling Hermit Thrush’s songs have pure tones (photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren)

The grassland dwelling Red-winged Blackbird’s songs have buzzy trills (photo by USFWS)

Anna: That is such a great question. And the answer is absolutely yes. Through evolutionary time, birds' songs have adapted to be most effective in their preferred habitat. And so, for example, songs of birds that require forests to live in have more pure tones, what we might call whistles, and tend to include fewer trills than those that live in open grasslands. And sound transmission experiments have demonstrated that rapid trills get easily blurred in forests by reverberation, so they get distorted. So that's probably why forest bird songs do not contain many trills, but they do contain wispy tones like whistles, especially thrushes. You can think of examples there. And moreover, these pure whistle tones are enhanced by the reverberations off of all the vegetation that's in forests.

Mickenzee: Wow, that is so interesting. I never knew that. Okay, so lastly, the third graders also learned about noise pollution and want to know could buildings in cities like Chicago affect how the bird calls sound or a bird's ability to hear another bird? 

White-crowned Sparrow (photo by Kelly Colgan Azar)

Anna: Yes, absolutely. There has been a lot of study of this phenomenon in recent years, and there is substantial evidence that a shift in minimum frequency, or that is how low or high a note is, but that notes increase with increased noise levels, like in urban areas. In other words, higher notes are used in more noisy environments. And there is a great study by Professor Elizabeth Terry Berry, who found that in San Francisco that White-crowned Sparrow song increased in pitch over a 35 year period as the traffic noise level increased over that same time period. And a likely reason is that these higher notes are less likely to be masked by the low frequency noises that are really common in cities, and therefore, the higher notes are more likely to be effective as a communication signal among the birds. And Dr. Terry Berry also tested how this change in song affects the sparrows hearing them, and she did that by presenting males during the breeding season. So when they're on territories and defending against other males with recordings of current songs and historical songs also made in San Francisco 35 years ago. And she found that the males responded much more strongly to the current than to the historical song, suggesting that the current songs communicate more effectively in the current urban environment.

Mickenzee: Whoa. I've always been fascinated by bird song, but I didn't know that there was just so many interesting things to learn. Thank you to the third graders at Lincoln Elementary for submitting these questions. And thank you, Anna, for coming to teach us all about it. 

Anna: Oh, thanks so much for your interest. And I really enjoyed talking about birds.

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If you are interested in learning more about bird voices or getting involved with our programs, please head to our website at swibirds.org. From there you can find free lessons like Bird Call Bingo as well as check out our calendar for events like Birding by Ear. If you have a big nature question that you'd like to have answered, please have a grown up or teacher submit your question to info@swibirds.org with the title Questions for QuACK.

Make sure you include your grade in the school that you attend, so I can give you a shout out on the show. Thanks for tuning in and I hope you join us next time on QuACK.


Check out SoWBA’s free lessons, games, and activities!⁠

⁠Get out and explore nature with us! 

Make a donation to Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance

Audio Editing and Transcription by Mickenzee Okon

Logo design by Carolyn Byers and Kaitlin Svabek

Music: “The Forest and the Trees” by Kevin MacLeod

Ep 006: Feathers with Laurie Solchenberger

Laurie relaxing out in nature (photo courtesy of Laurie Solchenberger)

In this episode, we answer questions like “How do birds stay warm in cold weather?” and “How do birds get their colors?” and learn about how black eye markings on birds help reduce the glare of the sun with our feather expert Laurie Solchenberger, a teacher at Lincoln Elementary School.

Subscribe to QuACK on Spotify, iHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app!

Transcription

Hey, and welcome to Questions Asked by Curious Kids, or QuACK, a podcast made by Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance. This is a podcast where we gather questions about nature from kids to be answered with a local expert. My name is Mickenzee. I'm an educator and I'll be the host for this series. This episode I'm joined with Laurie Solchenberger, a teacher at Lincoln Elementary School here in Madison and today we're going to be talking about feathers. All right, let's jump in with Laurie.

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Mickenzee: Hey, Laurie, welcome to the show.

Laurie: Hi, Mickenzee. It's so much fun to see you here.

Mickenzee: Yeah, it's so special to have you on. The listeners might not know this, but Laurie is one of the inspirations for this show. She's a teacher at Lincoln Elementary here in Madison, and she gathered questions with her class while they were volunteering for Bird Collision Corps and that's what inspired me to make this show and tackle some of those big questions with some guest experts. And Laurie, you yourself are a bit of an expert on birds. Or at least you're extremely passionate about them.

Laurie: Definitely passionate about birds. Yes. And I have been my whole life. Yeah, my whole life. And that's one reason why I bring them into the classroom. I can't remember a time when I didn't love birds. And my first real memory of a connection with them was with my neighbor. I was three years old. My neighbor built me a bird feeder.

Mickenzee: Wow.

Laurie: Yeah, and I still have it.

Mickenzee: Oh, wow. Yes, that's so special.

Laurie: Pretty cool, yeah. And I spent my whole childhood running around the woods with my cousins, finding things out in the woods, looking at the birds and.

Mickenzee: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. You know, following that curiosity. And all of our questions today were submitted by the third graders at Lincoln Elementary. Ones that you helped gather.

Laurie: Yes. And they still ask about you. They love listening to the podcast.

Mickenzee: Awesome. So our first question today is how do birds stay warm in cold weather? And I think about this a lot too, especially on really cold days.

Fluffed Northern Cardinal (photo by Arlene Koziol)

Laurie: Yes. Yeah. Birds. You know, we have really cold winters here sometimes in Wisconsin. And so a lot of our birds stay warm using their feathers. And they can use their feathers. Feathers are super important to birds. They can use their feathers in a lot of different ways. One way is they can puff up. They puff up and they'll look like they're getting really chunky. Sometimes kids will say they're so chunky. And I always say think about your jacket. If you have a jacket on and you are just standing with your arms down and your jackets on and you're outside that jacket is trapping all that air inside, and it helps keep you warm. And if you were to push your arms really close to yourself and squish all that air out of your jacket, then you might be a little bit colder.

Mickenzee:Yeah. It's about that hot air staying around your body.

Laurie: Yeah definitely. You know what I just learned recently?

Mickenzee: What's that?

Laurie: Woodpeckers don't have downy feathers.

Mickenzee: Really?

Laurie: Yeah

Mickenzee: I had no idea.

Laurie: I didn't either. So I wonder how do they stay warm?

Mickenzee: Right? Because they’re here in the winter.

Laurie: Yes they are.

Mickenzee: I wonder. And then this student is wondering what are bird wings made of. So you can tell with a bird that there's definitely feathers there on the outside. But I'm wondering if the student is wondering if it is just bones under there. Are there muscles? What else is going on with their wings.

Sandhill Crane with wings spread (photo by Arlene Koziol)

Laurie: Yeah. Well birds are pretty special because many can fly, right? Or many can kind of fly in the water. So yeah, there are bones. Birds' wings and bones are pretty special because they're hollow inside. So that helps the birds save energy. Their bones weigh a little bit less. And so they can save energy when they're flying. And finding food for energy is expensive for birds. And you might say how is that expensive for birds? Well they have to spend time and energy looking for food. So if they can save a little bit of energy by having hollow bones. Right. That's helpful for them.

Mickenzee:Absolutely.

Laurie: But there are muscles in there too. Definitely. Probably some tendons in there that help them fly.

Mickenzee: Right. If you think about flapping your own arms, the types of different muscles and ligaments and tendons that are helping your arms bounce up and down, but birds are even more specialized for doing that because that's their whole thing.

Laurie: Yeah. And you know, you're making me think back to your question about how they stay warm. You know, some birds do migrate, right?

Mickenzee:That's right.

Laurie: And so they do leave and they have to fly a long, long way. And so, yeah, if you were to flap your arms all that time, maybe 2 or 3 days nonstop, I mean, wow, I'd be pretty tired.

Mickenzee: Right.

Laurie: Another way that they do stay warm is they have their feathers we talked about. But like, huddling together, birds that stay will stay in flocks. You sometimes see a large group of birds all sitting kind of close together. And then all of their feathers are helping them all stay warm. Or maybe they'll hide in a little corner. Or if the wind is blowing, maybe they're on the other side of the tree so they're not right in the wind.

Mickenzee: So using their habitat too.

Laurie: Yes, their habitat.

Mickenzee: Definitely. Okay. This is a big question. This student is asking how do birds get their colors?

Laurie: Oh yeah that's a hard question.

Mickenzee: That's a big one.

Laurie: That is. And birds come in a lot of colors. Kind of like people right. We have pigmentation.

Mickenzee: Yeah. And it's the same pigmentations that makes birds their colors as it makes us.

Laurie: Yes. And so I'm going to look. I had to write them down. That pigmentation. We have melanin-

Mickenzee: Right

Laurie: -in our skin. And then we have different types.

Mickenzee: The two types of melanin. The eumelanin and the pheomelanin.

Laurie: Pheomelanin. Yeah. And so the pheomelanin makes the blacks and the browns. And the eumelanin makes the reds and yellows. And I thought that was pretty cool. And carotenoids.

Mickenzee: Yeah.

Laurie: Right. oh boy that took me back because I went to school a long time ago and studied about birds. And we don't think we don't talk a lot about what makes them their different colors. But color is really important to birds. So carotenoids, think about carrots. I love that. Love that. Think about carrots. That also makes yellows oranges and reds. Yeah.

Mickenzee: And then and then there's even trickier colors like blues and iridescence and oh…

Laurie: Right. And some birds have to eat certain foods to have their feathers show different colors. And if they don't eat those foods, then their feathers look different.

Mickenzee: That's so amazing. I wonder what color I would be based on the food I eat.

Laurie: Right?

Mickenzee: Maybe orange? I've been eating a lot of oranges lately.

Laurie: Yeah. Oh, and the birds blue coloration.

Blue Jay with bright blue feathers (photo by Eric Begin)

Mickenzee: Yeah. So blue's a tricky one, because blue, it's not a pigment. Like with the browns and the reds. It's kind of a trick that they're using. So the way that the light is bouncing off of their melanin rods makes us see blue.

Laurie: Isn't that cool?

Mickenzee: Right.

Laurie: Isn't that cool? So I think about the blue jay.

Mickenzee:Yes. Blue Jays

Laurie: Or a Blue Bird maybe.

Mickenzee: Anything blue in nature is usually doing that trick on us.

Laurie: Isn't that amazing?

Mickenzee: Right? Very cool stuff.

Laurie: Yeah. And we have iridescent feathers. Like hummingbirds.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird with shiny iridescent feathers on display (photo by Phil Brown)

Mickenzee: Hummingbirds are a great one to think of that ruby throat. I think of ducks too. A lot of ducks have iridescent feathers. Mallards have an iridescent head.

Laurie: Yeah. Oh yeah. And starlings. Yeah. And so those iridescent feathers can sometimes look like different colors. They can look black or dark blue. They look really shiny, sometimes purple or green.. Yeah. Those are just beautiful.

Mickenzee: Yeah. They're doing that same kind of shimmery trick with the blue. But it depends on the angle you're looking at the feather what color you're seeing. But yeah I think it's so interesting.

Laurie: Yeah. I mean even people think about fancy dresses people wear.

Mickenzee: Yeah. Those can sometimes have the same effect.

Laurie: Yeah. Sometimes they're iridescent or really shiny and they can look blue or purple.

Mickenzee: It's so cool and it's so special too. Our last question is from a student making an observation, which I love these questions. So this student noticed that Cedar Waxwings have a black mask. And they're wondering if that mask reduces the glare from sunlight. Kind of like how a baseball player or football player puts black under their eyes.

Laurie: Yeah. Isn't that incredible? One of the things I love the most about teaching is when questions like this come up. And so usually I always like to ask the kids to do the research. We didn't have time to do the research for that one. But I had to do some research on that one because I thought, I bet that that's why. I bet it does have the same impact as it would for like a football player. And it does.

Mickenzee: Very cool.

Cedar Waxwing pair (photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren)

Laurie: Yeah. So I found I actually had to do some research, and I had to make sure it was from a good website. So I looked at Cornell University's website. They have a lot of experts about birds there. And somebody studied, I think it was Peregrine falcons. And they learned that birds who lived in sunnier places had a little bit bigger black band near their eyes.. So I would think it was probably the same for Cedar Waxwing. Yeah. Definitely works really similar.

Mickenzee: I believe most birds that have that black mask over their eyes, that's what the purpose of it is for. Yeah, it's to help them out and then that makes me wonder too, do different markings on birds, help them in different ways besides, camouflage which is the main one we think of. Are there other things that the birds have?

Laurie: Right. Birds have. Yeah. And you're right. A lot of times we think that the camouflage is the important one, right? Because they don't want to get eaten by a predator. Yeah. And I always think there is a group of birds called the birds of Paradise. And I don't think we have any of those here in Wisconsin.

Mickenzee: I mostly think of them as tropical. Yeah.

Laurie: Yeah. Yeah. But they're beautiful birds, and their coloration is often used, and they have spectacular feathers, all different shapes. They do these amazing dances with their feathers, and that is all to find a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Mickenzee: Attract a mate.

Laurie: Attract a mate. You got it. Yep. And so that's one other reason to have that coloration in the feathers.

Mickenzee: Yeah. Fancy feathers as a signal. Yeah.

Laurie: Yeah. Oh and it can also signal. This is my territory. This is my home. Stay away.

Mickenzee: Yes. Yeah.

Laurie: So sometimes to male birds or two boy birds will kind of fight using their feathers. And so they might show their feathers to make themselves look really big and tough. To try to intimidate the other ones.

Mickenzee: All right. We learned so much today about feathers and different colors that birds can be. So thank you to the third graders at Lincoln Elementary for submitting your questions. And thank you, Laurie, for coming on and teaching and talking to us.

Laurie: You're welcome. Thanks for having me on today. It was so much fun.

Mickenzee: Of course,

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If you are interested in learning more about feathers or getting involved in our programs, please head to our website swibirds.org and check out the free lessons, games and activities.

There's so many things you can talk about when you talk about feathers, and we have so many different jumping off points to get you started. You can check out events on our event calendar or get yourself involved in citizen science programs. If you have big nature questions that you'd like to have answered, please have a grown up or your teacher submit your question to info@swibirds.org. with the title Questions for QuACK. Make sure to include your grade and the school that you attend, so I can give you a shout out on the show. Thank you for tuning in and I hope you join us next time on QuACK!


Check out SoWBA’s free lessons, games, and activities!⁠

⁠Get out and explore nature with us! 

Make a donation to Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance

Audio Editing and Transcription by Mickenzee Okon

Logo design by Carolyn Byers and Kaitlin Svabek

Music: “The Forest and the Trees” by Kevin MacLeod