Forest Soundscape

Program Description

Forest vegetation absorbs sound, and it absorbs high-pitched sounds even better than lower pitched ones. Getting a complicated song to carry reliably in dense vegetation is difficult. So, forest birds who want to have their songs and calls carry through the trees tend to have low voices and simple songs. The varied thrush is a good example.

There are other strategies for getting a song to carry farther in the forest, most notably singing from higher up in the trees instead of down nearer the ground.

Forest birds who do not need to project their songs over a large territory don't need to use these strategies. The brown creeper's high-pitched song suits its small territory very well. It may help protect the bird, too: because its song doesn't carry, it doesn't give away its location to passing predators.

Program & Recording Notes

Chris Tenney recorded the brown creeper's song. The recording of the varied thrush is from the CD collection Bird Songs of California from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Series 3
Egg Calls
Chick ID Calls
Chicken Calls
Vocal Tract
Syrinx Styles
Airway Model
Airway Overtones
Coiled Trachea
Beak & Airway
Vowels & Airway
Tuvan Throat Singing
Whistling

Series 4
Size & Sound
Forest Soundscape
Grassland Soundscape
Bird Hearing
Local Dialects
Regional Dialects
Drumming - Woodpeckers Etc.
Bird Tongues
Bird Brains & Singing
Song Duels?
Dawn Chorus
Finale: Song Sparrow