WHY AND HOW BIRDS SING?

CUCK OO ... CUCK OO

Some time I want to be alone, hearing the sound …. Cuck oo... Cuck oo! 

I have always fascinated by the bird’s call or song. Her wandering voice leads me through the woods and valleys….. The cuckoo's double-call seems to travel rapidly from hill to hill. Sometimes, I feel it very near and sometimes very far away. 

The Cuckoo can be found in Africa, Asia and Northern Europe. They are slim bodied and are about 13 inches in length. They never build a nest, preferring instead to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds who unwittingly raise the cuckoo fledglings as their own.

Franz Anton Ketterer in the small village of Schönwald near Triberg, Germany managed to reproduce the cuckoo's call by the clever use of bellows producing two different sounds.  Following him, the inhabitants of the region employed the long winter months in making clocks with richly hand carved decorations from various woods, which practice gave the world the famous Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks.

Birds Sing Songs, Chatter, Call, Talk or Whistle for a variety of reasons. Birds have their own unique way of communicating their desires, needs, feelings or emotions through body language and through their voice.

They are Talking  when they are content and happy and wants to send a message to the another bird or it's owner. They are Whistling when they feel  content, safe and is at ease in their world. They are Chattering  when  just like to talk, talk about anything; their environment, how they feel, the state of the union....so to communicate their thoughts, they Chirp, sometimes incessantly, sometimes loud, sometimes soft. Young birds chirp or chatter when they want fed. Birds in the wild often chatter as a warning sign to other birds that something is not right in their environment, or as a call to attract another bird's attention. 

There are many reasons why a bird sings, may be  communicating a message to another bird ,to her owner or when they are happy and just feel  like singing a song.

A Bird’s Call sometimes for a specific reason, to attract a mate, to establish the bird's territory, Maintain a bond between male and female bird, for communication between parent and young ,as a means of warning in danger to others ,gathering a flock together or finding each other, a tactic of intimidation to predators or even for encouraging  fellow flock members to be together ( remember geese flying ).

Birds do practice their songs, calling and talking through repetition.

HOW BIRDS SING?

The mechanism of how bird sings is entirely different from voice or wind instruments, what we call larynx in mammals, reptiles and amphibians which they use to produce sound. But when a bird undertakes to sing, it in effect closes a valve between the lung and syrinx.  Then it compresses the air in a system of air sacs. Now the pressure in the clavicle air sacs which surrounds this syrinx forces the tympanic membrane into the bronchial passage closing it quickly.  Now tension is applied to the musculatures which with draw the bulged membrane from the opposite bronchial wall thus it creates a passage through the bronchial tube.  The air streaming through the passage past the tenses membrane stimulates it to vibrate and song is thus produced.

As William Words Worth says in his  poem “to the cuckoo”…….

I live the moment in the past but the cuckoo lives in the present.

Bye, see you next week!