Singing in High Places

Eastern Towhee

What could I associate with renewal more than birdsong? Shedding my seasonally introverted nature coincides with the procreative surge of birds in springtime melody.

Common Yellowthroat

I look upward to trace the source of song, to a bird tilted upward in full-throated projection.

Tufted Titmouse

A male is advertising his suitability as a mate, or proclaiming the bounds of his realm.

Red-winged Blackbird

Carolina Wren

Scarlet Tanager

Appreciation of melodic sound and vibrant color are among my strongest aesthetic delights. For the creatures of origin these expressions are tied to practical functions.

Gray Catbird

Nevertheless, when our local mimics extend their musical exuberance with endless borrowings and inventions I have to wonder if their pragmatic sounds are laced with joy.

Northern Mockingbird

The three mimid species of Halibut Point, the catbird, mockingbird, and thrasher, benefit from a relatively large endowment of vocal cords. Songsters vibrate these muscles within the syrinx organs paired where the two bronchial tubes meet the trachea. Some birds can sing through their syringes separately and simultaneously to produce complex repertoires of pitch and harmony.

Brown Thrasher

The Brown Thrasher devises over a thousand different musical phrases in long, boisterous recitations.

Black-capped Chickadee

The sing-song notes from chickadees have endeared them to Massachusetts citizens as our State Bird. Whistles and twitters help the birds stay together as they gambol through woodlands or search out suitable liaisons.

Orchard Oriole

The blackbird family of icterids counts among its relatives some notable vocalists whose intonations range from the pure clarity of orioles to the raspy whistles of grackles.

Common Grackles

While not all these songs are received with equal appreciation by the human ear their musicality serves its owners' social purposes fittingly.

Blue Jay

Jays and crows communicate extensively with sounds that are often more informative or questioning than melodic.

American Crow

Members of the corvid family are among the most intelligent and social of songbirds, and the most raucous.

Song Sparrow

Pronouncements from high places set the tune for each species' most fundamental endeavors.

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With thanks to Chris Leahy's informative essay on "Song" in The Birdwatcher's Comnpanion.