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Birdsong
Following one of the world's experts on birdsong from the woods of Martha's Vineyard to the tropical forests of Central America, Don Stap brings to life the quest to unravel an ancient Why do birds sing and what do their songs mean? We quickly discover that one question leads to another. Why does the chestnut-sided warbler sing one song before dawn and another after sunrise? Why does the brown thrasher have a repertoire of two thousand songs when the chipping sparrow has only one? And how is the hermit thrush able to sing a duet with itself, producing two sounds simultaneously to create its beautiful, flutelike melody? Stap's lucid prose distills the complexities of the study of birdsong and unveils a remarkable discovery that sheds light on the mystery of why young birds in the suborder oscines -- the "true songbirds" -- learn their songs but the closely related suboscines are born with their songs genetically encoded. As the story unfolds, Stap contemplates our enduring fascination with birdsong, from ancient pictographs and early Greek soothsayers, who knew that bird calls represented the voices of the gods, to the story of Mozart's pet starling. In a modern, noisy world, it is increasingly difficult to hear those voices of the gods. Exploring birdsong takes us to that rare place -- in danger of disappearing forever -- where one hears only the planet's oldest music.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 2005
8 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
About the author
Don Stap
11 books2 followersDon Stap is an American author known for his poetry and nonfiction focused on the natural world, particularly birds. Raised in rural Michigan, Stap developed a deep connection to nature early in life, an interest that has shaped much of his work. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Utah, he taught for over three decades at the University of Central Florida, where he is now Professor Emeritus.
His books include A Parrot Without a Name, chronicling ornithological expeditions in South America, and Birdsong, which explores the science of avian vocalization through fieldwork with expert Donald Kroodsma. Stap’s prose has appeared in Audubon, Smithsonian, and Orion, and his poetry in journals such as Poetry and TriQuarterly. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs.
His books include A Parrot Without a Name, chronicling ornithological expeditions in South America, and Birdsong, which explores the science of avian vocalization through fieldwork with expert Donald Kroodsma. Stap’s prose has appeared in Audubon, Smithsonian, and Orion, and his poetry in journals such as Poetry and TriQuarterly. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 7, 2024
I was fascinated from the moment I started reading this book. It isn’t what I expected, but I also didn’t really know what to expect and was open to go on the journey (journeys) it took me on. One other review I saw said this book is much more about scientists than birds, but I think it’s both. I loved reading about the long hours of field research getting up before sunrise and standing still in the wild recording bird after bird, song after song, gathering evidence sometimes for scientific purposes, but also for the love of it and the interest and fascination of learning whether a specific species of bird (in this case a bellbird) was learning it’s song or whether it was born with it. This book was a very interesting and sometimes wild ride, and I was sucked into it more than I ever expected to be. I don’t know if this is a book for everyone, but I’m grateful to have come across it at my local library and started to read it standing in the aisle. I learned something about myself, and that’s worth it.
I think my 4 star rating is arbitrary because I got something out of this book that I don’t believe most people will, and many may be bored by it. Oh well. I would have given it another star if it came with recordings of the bird songs that were talked about in the pages of this book. I looked them up myself, but I often do not agree with the way people transcribe the sounds of bird calls and songs.
For instance when I hear a Chickadee’s fee-bee call it sounds much more like ‘me too’. I absolutely don’t hear anything that sounds like ‘hey, sweetie’.
I think my 4 star rating is arbitrary because I got something out of this book that I don’t believe most people will, and many may be bored by it. Oh well. I would have given it another star if it came with recordings of the bird songs that were talked about in the pages of this book. I looked them up myself, but I often do not agree with the way people transcribe the sounds of bird calls and songs.
For instance when I hear a Chickadee’s fee-bee call it sounds much more like ‘me too’. I absolutely don’t hear anything that sounds like ‘hey, sweetie’.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 30, 2015
I'm done with this book. Done I say! I have read roughly half and I am clueless as to the point of the book. There is not introduction, title chapters, or even themed sections. I also had no idea that to gain any knowledge over the ornithology subject is to do horrible things to birds. I mean, how can anyone say that they love birds when they do these things? They radiated and then killed birds to see if they regenerated brain cells, cut vocal cords to see if they could still sing, isolated birds from all other birds and sounds outside of whatever chosen recording it is, for months or even a yr? They castrated male birds, pumped testosterone into females, stole babies from nests, relocated others, and had a bunch of fun with sensors.
But what was worse was that I didn't know what was the point for listing out experiment after experiment, stat after stat, one Kroodsma story after another. Was it to list the history of the study? Was it to state what we do know? What we don't know? The terrible practice that is under the guise of ornithology? Well, I can tell it wasn't the last one as Stap seemed to take a blasé tone in describing the experiments.
If you want a basic summary of what we do know about birdsongs and in particular, songbirds, just read pg 84-92. The book was very interesting at first, but after the never-ending list of atrocities done to birds, I was done. Maybe if I knew of the direction of the book, I could have known if the author had a purpose for his tangents, if anything was going to amount from this information, or that it was worth muddling through any of those experiment details that I barely understood and just seemed cruel.
But what was worse was that I didn't know what was the point for listing out experiment after experiment, stat after stat, one Kroodsma story after another. Was it to list the history of the study? Was it to state what we do know? What we don't know? The terrible practice that is under the guise of ornithology? Well, I can tell it wasn't the last one as Stap seemed to take a blasé tone in describing the experiments.
If you want a basic summary of what we do know about birdsongs and in particular, songbirds, just read pg 84-92. The book was very interesting at first, but after the never-ending list of atrocities done to birds, I was done. Maybe if I knew of the direction of the book, I could have known if the author had a purpose for his tangents, if anything was going to amount from this information, or that it was worth muddling through any of those experiment details that I barely understood and just seemed cruel.
August 9, 2016
_Birdsong_ by Don Stap is an introduction to the amazing world of how and why birds sing the way they do, often centering on the author following world-renown birdsong expert University of Massachusetts professor of biology Don Kroodsma around the country and in the rain forest of Central America. Also covered are the history and science of the study of birdsong (part of a field called bioacoustics), the invention of the audiospectrograph or sonograph, and details of the first birdsong laboratory studies.
Songs are "typically an elaborate series of notes, often musical to our ear" and are almost exclusively delivered by the male of a species, usually repeatedly for long periods of time. In contrast calls are simple, brief vocalizations made by both sexes to "influence behavior in particular contexts" (whether it be nestlings begging for food or geese honking in flight to coordinate flock movement).
Singing birds are all members of the order Passeriformes, which accounts for roughly 5,500 of the world's 9,000 species of birds. Specifically, "songbirds" are of one of the two suborders of Passeriformes and are collectively called oscines, a group of 4,500-plus species that includes many familiar species such as jays, tanagers, orioles, thrushes, vireos, and warblers. What separates the oscines from every other bird (and indeed, just about every animal on the planet except for some cetaceans) is that most creatures are born with their vocalizations genetically encoded. Essentially, even if they were born deaf they would still vocalize as other members of their species would. Oscines though learn to sing in a manner not unlike how children learn to speak. They listen to adults and practice what they hear until they can repeat it.
Research has shown that songbirds learn their songs in stages. Young bird hear their species song(s) while still in the nest and memorize it an early age even though they make no immediate attempts to vocalize themselves. Experiments in the lab have shown that songbirds are born with an "innate species song template;" they understand instinctively which sounds to memorize and ignore the songs of other bird species.
Soon after a bird is fledged, its first attempts at producing sound amount to little more than "incoherent babbling," a type of vocalization called a subsong, which contains many of the proper sounds of their species song, just not in the right order and likely incomplete. Birds generally stop their subsongs by the end of the summer of the bird's first year, remaining silent until late winter when it resumes practicing once again, producing what is called a plastic song, a rough version of its species song. By spring this has been perfected into the full song. Some species continue to learn variations of their species' song, adopting elements from other birds they encounter, while mimics like mockingbirds and starlings go on learning their entire lives.
Birdsongs and singing behavior can vary in one of two ways, in terms of dialect and repertoire. A bird's repertoire is how many different songs it sings, while dialects are geographically-based variations that occur among individuals of the same species.
The numbers of songs a species has varies considerably. Many species such as chipping sparrows, indigo buntings, and black-capped chickadees sing only one song. The American redstart can sing anywhere from 1 to 8 songs, the eastern towhee 3 to 8, and the cardinal 8 to 12. Some species have huge repertoires; the wood thrush, 20 songs; the Carolina wren, 40; the robin, 100 or more; the sedge wren, 300 to 400 songs; and the brown thrasher, 2,000 or more. Generally among species with repertoires, one song is sung most frequently and the others are sung with varying degrees of frequency, often in varying order.
Geographic variation in oscine species song can be quite sharp, as with the white-crowned sparrow, which has strong variations in its species song in populations only a kilometer apart, though more commonly it is gradual, as with the Carolina wren, whose song gradually slows over its range south from Ohio to Florida. Dialects are a result of a young bird learning elements of its song from the birds in the area where it establishes itself as an adult. While it learned the basics of its song from its father, the bird makes adjustments after listening to adults in the area it has chosen.
Interestingly, researchers have speculated that among many species there appears to be little or no gene flow across dialect boundaries, trapping birds "on vocal desert islands," with birds of one dialect only breeding with each other, a fact that may promote speciation and explain why songbirds are the most diverse and numerous birds on the planet.
Kroodsma has been a pioneer in studying birdsong in suboscines, a group of birds that is much neglected in the field of bioacoustics. They are the other suborder of Passeriformes and comprise about a thousand species, represented in North America by only a few species of flycatchers but much more common in the tropical Americas, comprising nearly a thousand species of flycatchers, antbirds, antwrens, woodcreepers, and others.
In contrast to oscines, their innate songs are the same from one area to the next; the alder flycatcher's song is the same from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Once early research showed that their generally simple and unmusical songs were genetically encoded and not learned, they were not much researched. Kroodsma felt them unfairly neglected, in large part because the difficulties of fieldwork in tropical forests were a huge disincentive, as well as the fact that far fewer biologists worked in the tropics and there was a language barrier to contend with.
Stap covered in detail Kroodsma's studies of the three-wattled bellbird in Central America, a brilliantly-colored suboscine with a distinctive song. First coming across anecdotal evidence that the bellbird had not only three different dialects but that it also in fact learned its songs, which, if confirmed, would be an amazing discovery; Kroodsma undertook a study of these birds.
Songs are "typically an elaborate series of notes, often musical to our ear" and are almost exclusively delivered by the male of a species, usually repeatedly for long periods of time. In contrast calls are simple, brief vocalizations made by both sexes to "influence behavior in particular contexts" (whether it be nestlings begging for food or geese honking in flight to coordinate flock movement).
Singing birds are all members of the order Passeriformes, which accounts for roughly 5,500 of the world's 9,000 species of birds. Specifically, "songbirds" are of one of the two suborders of Passeriformes and are collectively called oscines, a group of 4,500-plus species that includes many familiar species such as jays, tanagers, orioles, thrushes, vireos, and warblers. What separates the oscines from every other bird (and indeed, just about every animal on the planet except for some cetaceans) is that most creatures are born with their vocalizations genetically encoded. Essentially, even if they were born deaf they would still vocalize as other members of their species would. Oscines though learn to sing in a manner not unlike how children learn to speak. They listen to adults and practice what they hear until they can repeat it.
Research has shown that songbirds learn their songs in stages. Young bird hear their species song(s) while still in the nest and memorize it an early age even though they make no immediate attempts to vocalize themselves. Experiments in the lab have shown that songbirds are born with an "innate species song template;" they understand instinctively which sounds to memorize and ignore the songs of other bird species.
Soon after a bird is fledged, its first attempts at producing sound amount to little more than "incoherent babbling," a type of vocalization called a subsong, which contains many of the proper sounds of their species song, just not in the right order and likely incomplete. Birds generally stop their subsongs by the end of the summer of the bird's first year, remaining silent until late winter when it resumes practicing once again, producing what is called a plastic song, a rough version of its species song. By spring this has been perfected into the full song. Some species continue to learn variations of their species' song, adopting elements from other birds they encounter, while mimics like mockingbirds and starlings go on learning their entire lives.
Birdsongs and singing behavior can vary in one of two ways, in terms of dialect and repertoire. A bird's repertoire is how many different songs it sings, while dialects are geographically-based variations that occur among individuals of the same species.
The numbers of songs a species has varies considerably. Many species such as chipping sparrows, indigo buntings, and black-capped chickadees sing only one song. The American redstart can sing anywhere from 1 to 8 songs, the eastern towhee 3 to 8, and the cardinal 8 to 12. Some species have huge repertoires; the wood thrush, 20 songs; the Carolina wren, 40; the robin, 100 or more; the sedge wren, 300 to 400 songs; and the brown thrasher, 2,000 or more. Generally among species with repertoires, one song is sung most frequently and the others are sung with varying degrees of frequency, often in varying order.
Geographic variation in oscine species song can be quite sharp, as with the white-crowned sparrow, which has strong variations in its species song in populations only a kilometer apart, though more commonly it is gradual, as with the Carolina wren, whose song gradually slows over its range south from Ohio to Florida. Dialects are a result of a young bird learning elements of its song from the birds in the area where it establishes itself as an adult. While it learned the basics of its song from its father, the bird makes adjustments after listening to adults in the area it has chosen.
Interestingly, researchers have speculated that among many species there appears to be little or no gene flow across dialect boundaries, trapping birds "on vocal desert islands," with birds of one dialect only breeding with each other, a fact that may promote speciation and explain why songbirds are the most diverse and numerous birds on the planet.
Kroodsma has been a pioneer in studying birdsong in suboscines, a group of birds that is much neglected in the field of bioacoustics. They are the other suborder of Passeriformes and comprise about a thousand species, represented in North America by only a few species of flycatchers but much more common in the tropical Americas, comprising nearly a thousand species of flycatchers, antbirds, antwrens, woodcreepers, and others.
In contrast to oscines, their innate songs are the same from one area to the next; the alder flycatcher's song is the same from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Once early research showed that their generally simple and unmusical songs were genetically encoded and not learned, they were not much researched. Kroodsma felt them unfairly neglected, in large part because the difficulties of fieldwork in tropical forests were a huge disincentive, as well as the fact that far fewer biologists worked in the tropics and there was a language barrier to contend with.
Stap covered in detail Kroodsma's studies of the three-wattled bellbird in Central America, a brilliantly-colored suboscine with a distinctive song. First coming across anecdotal evidence that the bellbird had not only three different dialects but that it also in fact learned its songs, which, if confirmed, would be an amazing discovery; Kroodsma undertook a study of these birds.
March 8, 2023
More about scientists than birdsong but an interesting read.
September 30, 2024
Made me love birdsong. I fear for the day when my hearing is lost and I can no longer hear them sing.
January 4, 2026
i am not fond of non fiction books, so i was not really interested in all the junk in them, so given that i enjoyed the parts about the birds the rest not so much, but it has a pretty cover.
December 3, 2015
part biography, part journalistic foray, part science narrative, this book describes some of the history of the study of bird song and how we found out much of it is learned from a first-person perspective.
Stap focuses on Kroodsma’s meticulous and reverent dedication to documenting bird songs from different regions and different species. this researcher even pioneered raising chicks of various species in the lab to help prove whether or not their songs are culturally learned or hardwired in their neurosystems. Stap delves into the science of bioacoustics just enough to explain what’s going on but keeps the story moving with biographical and historical moments.
he ends the book with almost a diary of field work that sought to find evidence for suboscine song learning in the bellbirds of Costa Rica. the passerine or perching song birds are subdivided into the oscines and the suboscines. the oscines are know to learn their songs and change them. they do not sing from a hardwired archive but the suboscines do. however, according to Stap, Kroodsma has intriguing evidence to the contrary but hadn’t published it at the time of this book’s release.
on an aesthetic note, i liked this book but, then, i find this topic fascinating and so am probably a bit biased. the writing was clear but the storytelling was a bit muddy and the last few chapters of the book felt a little bit like filler as Spat unwound the tale of the the bellbird search with perhaps a little too much detail. definitely a good read if you find this kind of thing interesting but don’t want to wade through a scientific manual, handbook, or published research articles.
Stap focuses on Kroodsma’s meticulous and reverent dedication to documenting bird songs from different regions and different species. this researcher even pioneered raising chicks of various species in the lab to help prove whether or not their songs are culturally learned or hardwired in their neurosystems. Stap delves into the science of bioacoustics just enough to explain what’s going on but keeps the story moving with biographical and historical moments.
he ends the book with almost a diary of field work that sought to find evidence for suboscine song learning in the bellbirds of Costa Rica. the passerine or perching song birds are subdivided into the oscines and the suboscines. the oscines are know to learn their songs and change them. they do not sing from a hardwired archive but the suboscines do. however, according to Stap, Kroodsma has intriguing evidence to the contrary but hadn’t published it at the time of this book’s release.
on an aesthetic note, i liked this book but, then, i find this topic fascinating and so am probably a bit biased. the writing was clear but the storytelling was a bit muddy and the last few chapters of the book felt a little bit like filler as Spat unwound the tale of the the bellbird search with perhaps a little too much detail. definitely a good read if you find this kind of thing interesting but don’t want to wade through a scientific manual, handbook, or published research articles.
September 27, 2009
Birdsong seems to be one of those things that divides people into two categories - those who think it's quite nice, often quite attractive, and those that really, REALLY like it. If you fall into the first category, reading the accounts of people in the second category can leave you feeling a little more ambivalent than you were before: if I'm not a truly devoted fan like these people, am I a fan at all? I guess it's a better obsession to have than some - gets you up early, out in the fresh morning air, and (at least if you're not listening to zebra finches) birdsong is often very beautiful. Beats trainspotting.
Still, I'm a little unsure of what to make of this book, written by an English professor about the study of birdsong in general, and the work of Prof Don Kroodsma in particular. There's a little bit of structure to it, and an awful lot of information about a variety of aspects of the vocalisations of songbirds, including their evolution, learning styles, and study in the laboratory, but mostly it seems to revolve around the author relating stories of following Kroodsma about on early mornings in various locales of North & Central America. These can be quite interesting, and are certainly revealing, interesting portraits of a very driven scientist (one whose work, particularly more theoretical stuff on how to construct experiments and write about science, I'm quite familiar with), but overall... I'm not sure that it really deserves its title.
Quite close to being satisfying, but not quite getting there.
Still, I'm a little unsure of what to make of this book, written by an English professor about the study of birdsong in general, and the work of Prof Don Kroodsma in particular. There's a little bit of structure to it, and an awful lot of information about a variety of aspects of the vocalisations of songbirds, including their evolution, learning styles, and study in the laboratory, but mostly it seems to revolve around the author relating stories of following Kroodsma about on early mornings in various locales of North & Central America. These can be quite interesting, and are certainly revealing, interesting portraits of a very driven scientist (one whose work, particularly more theoretical stuff on how to construct experiments and write about science, I'm quite familiar with), but overall... I'm not sure that it really deserves its title.
Quite close to being satisfying, but not quite getting there.
November 19, 2010
This book has a number of fascinating facts and a number of interesting field observations and other ornithological incidents, but on the whole, its odd and unrewarding episodic nature is disappointing. But that is not why I don't recommend reading it.
Here's why: I am appalled at the bland manner with which the author reveals the atrocities that ornithologists commit in the name of research: castrating songbirds in order to determine whether testosterone affects their urge to sing; surgically deafening songbirds to study whether their song is instinctual or learned; and raising birds from infancy in isolation in order to see what they might sing or whether they sing at all. These sickened me.
The author reports these "experiments" without comment, apparently unaware that most readers will be people who are birders who respect the natural world and its denizens, particularly birds, or, worse, utterly unaware that such "research" might be repellent to anyone who is not "blinded by science."
The author knows how to write, but his traveling company and judgment leave all to be desired.
Here's why: I am appalled at the bland manner with which the author reveals the atrocities that ornithologists commit in the name of research: castrating songbirds in order to determine whether testosterone affects their urge to sing; surgically deafening songbirds to study whether their song is instinctual or learned; and raising birds from infancy in isolation in order to see what they might sing or whether they sing at all. These sickened me.
The author reports these "experiments" without comment, apparently unaware that most readers will be people who are birders who respect the natural world and its denizens, particularly birds, or, worse, utterly unaware that such "research" might be repellent to anyone who is not "blinded by science."
The author knows how to write, but his traveling company and judgment leave all to be desired.
June 2, 2013
Every spring, during migration bird-watching season, I pull a bird book off my shelf, and this year it was BIRDSONG. Even as I've become more adept at identifying birds through visual cues, I'm still stumped by their songs, with only a few exceptions. I can't say that this book helped me with that problem in any practical sense, but it did inspire me to check into the works of birdsong expert Don Kroodsma, the main character in Stap's story. I also enjoyed the chance to follow Kroodsma and his fellow scientists and enthusiasts into the field to study the language of birds and what it might mean.
September 4, 2007
Some of my favorite sounds are birdsongs. I love the sounds of seagulls because it means the water is near. Chickadees in the spring and fall. This book will take you on a fascinating journey as to just how amazing birdsong is. Why do they do it? Why does one bird sing one song befroe dawn and a different after? Why does one bird have only a few songs in their repetoire and another have 2,000? By the time you are done with this book you may not have all the answers but you will never veiw birds the same.
January 27, 2010
Ik had veel meer verwacht van dit boekje: wetenschappelijke feiten, links naar de muziek, literatuur, etc... In de plaats krijg je een quasi journalistiek relaas over de carrière van een handvol wetenschappers, met aansluitend het reisverslag van één bepaald onderzoek naar de klokvogels in Costa Rica. Allemaal nogal droogjes en zonder het kleinste beetje humor. Flauw.
September 25, 2017
Not for everyone non-fiction. Having been involved in field work, I really enjoyed the adventures of ornithologist Don Kroodsma thru Central America looking for and recording songs of rare and disappearing birds. As a bonus, Google 'three-wattle bellbird' videos to hear his most astounding song and looks. They are disappearing as forest around them is being cut for farming.
October 5, 2009
Chock full of arrogant ornithologists and birders. These are the kind of people who drive out too many unskilled beginners.
January 16, 2010
I like to read nature books, so I enjoyed this one. It explores the research of bird song and captures both the process and personalities of the researchers.
May 17, 2013
The first third or so of the book was a bit lost on me, but eventually I warmed up to Kroodsma's story, particularly once he started working with the suboscines.
December 8, 2015
Not what I thought it was going to be. A little bit boring.
*No Favorite Passages*
*No Favorite Passages*
May 14, 2016
I never would have thought that a book about birds singing could be this interesting. Stap gives enough background into his research so you know that he is factual, without overstating.
July 14, 2021
Very interesting! The people who spend their lives investigating birdsong tend to be very dedicated characters, it seems.
science
March 27, 2018 An engaging but notvery wellorganized discussion of "avian bioacoustics" emphasizing the views and contributions of Dan Kroodsma.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews