The song of birds can be soothing and inspiring, but birds sing for more than just the beauty of it. Birds use song, call notes and behavior to communicate with each other. Birds use sound and action to scare off predators or warn other birds about danger, to attract a mate or to defend one's territory.
Not all birds sing, but those that do are in a class of birds known as passerines, or perching birds. Many familiar backyard birds are songbirds, including sparrows, wrens, warblers and thrushes. The males of the species often sing more than the females. The males sing to announce their presence and to let females know that they are available for mating. They also sing to defend the territory in which they mate, nest or feed. Females do not sing as frequently as the males. A song is often a multi-noted phrase that is repeated over and over. Some species only have one song in their repertoire, while other species may have several. Some birds, such as starlings, will mimic the songs of other species of birds, and they may be able to produce dozens of different songs.
A more common form of communication among birds are call notes. Most birds communicate aurally, although some are more vocal than others, and each species of bird has a variety of call notes to convey different messages. Birds use call notes to alert other birds of danger, and some species may have different call notes for different threats (for example, they may have one note to sound the alarm for an airborne predator like a hawk or owl and another note for a land predator like a cat). Birds also use call notes to locate their mate or offspring or to communicate with other birds in their flock while they are flying. In smaller birds, call notes often sound like a chip, chirp or peep, and in larger birds the call notes may sound like a screech, caw or click.
Birds also communicate with their behavior. In many bird species, the male will dance, strut or put on some other performance to attract a female. Some birds, such as killdeer, fake an injury to lure predators away from their nests. Many other birds behave aggressively if their nest or territory is threatened and may attack the interlopers, even if they are much larger than the birds are.
One of the most important things to unlock what birds are saying is to always remember that birds communicate for survival. It’s important to realize this difference between calls and songs is a universal principle of how songbirds communicate all around the world. The difference has nothing to do with any particular species, so you don’t need to be skilled at bird identification to know which message is being given.
Whenever you see an example of bird body language, look closer so you can try to determine what’s causing the bird to act that way. Repetitive body motions like tail flipping and beak rubbing are often signs of alertness used to flag the attention of other nearby birds. These movements can also be a nervous response that helps you know the emotional state of whatever bird is making a display. With lots of practice studying the subtleties of body language in birds, you’ll discover that every action birds take is always communicating their inner feelings & intentions. Even the specific pattern of bird flight will carry it’s own message depending on the body language used to perform the movement.
While bird behavior is very closely related to body language, it’s also worthwhile to study these individually for their own insights. An important distinction here is to realize that almost any bird behavior can be done with an underlying body language that communicates either stress or relaxation.
Birds will typically avoid doing maintenance behaviors like feeding, nest building, and preening when there are predators in the area because it puts them at risk by splitting their attention. When there are dangerous animals in the area, it’s much safer to focus on alarm behavior and staying alert to what’s happening. These alertness behaviors help to communicate the location of any nearby predators to other nearby birds, as well as the level of risk posed by the threat.
Opposite to this when you see birds singing, building nests, feeding & defending territories, it’s a pretty good bet they’re not in any immediate life-threatening danger. However, in actual practice there’s a lot more grey area to knowing what birds are communicating through their behavior. Sometimes it’s simply not practical for a bird to stop eating and doing life essential behaviors, so birds have to balance being cautious while continuing to take the necessary actions that support their success in life.
