Researchers have found that when songbirds shoot loudly outside your window in the wee hours of the morning, they just practice. And like the best crowns, they sing better after being given a chance to loosen their voice.
What they found is that the day of the birds was generally improved – as the day went on – which meant they could produce more physically challenging songs. However, males producing many songs had more variability in their vocal performance, suggesting that some birds may become tired when they sing.
As it turns out, vocal performance has “serious consequences for swamp sparrows,” said Jason Dinh, a biological Ph.D. student at Duke and the lead author of the study.
“Older and older men tend to sing higher-performing songs,” he wrote in an email to CNN. “Furthermore, high-performance songs are more attractive to females and more intimidating to rival males. By warming up and improving their focal performance, birds might be able to attract mates better than rivals later in the morning.
So, how does a challenging song sound to a songbird?
Dinh wrote that for swamp sparrows, songs were physically challenging as they were quickly vibrated and hit a wide range of pitches. Those factors depend on how fast a bird can move its beak and how wide it can open, he added.
But although researchers have learned that the intense singing of songbirds at breakfast is because they warm up, they still do not know exactly why it improves their singing.
Warming up is helpful for people both when they are singing and exercising because it increases the temperature of the muscles, Dinh explained. Warming up before singing can also help hydrate our vocal cords.
Yet Dinh said it is entirely possible that the case could have been different in birds.
“It is difficult to make a direct comparison with warming in birds, because their mechanizing mechanisms are so different from ours,” he wrote. “However, it is possible that the general benefit of literally warming up the sound-producing muscles and tissues may also apply to birds.”
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