birds – Page 2

Urban birds sing at higher pitch than rural ones to help song carry further, research shows.

This link was originally posted to /r/birding. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

The original link was: https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/news/archive/2011/12/title-110460-en.html

Birds that sing their songs at a higher pitch help them travel further in built-up areas.

Previously it was thought that great tits and other common birds sung at a higher pitch in noisy areas to avoid the low pitch noise from traffic and industry.

Now, scientists from Aberystwyth University and the University of Copenhagen have found that it is the buildings that are changing the way that birds sing in cities.

Their new study, published in the journal PLoS One, suggests that urban architecture may be just as important as background noise in shaping how our birds sing.

“Our cities are packed with reflective surfaces, open spaces and narrow channels, which you just don’t get in woodland. Because sounds bounce and travel in different ways, birds have to use songs that can cope with this”, says researcher Emily Mockford. “The higher notes mean the echoes disappear faster and the next note is clearer”.

A surprise result also showed that urban songs transmitted more clearly in woodland than the rural songs of the local birds. So why don’t rural birds also sing urban songs?

Dr Rupert Marshall, Lecturer in Animal Behaviour at Aberystwyth University, commented “In woodland where trees and leaves obscure the view, many species of songbird can tell how far away a rival is by how degraded its song is. In cities there are fewer visual obstacles and song doesn’t degrade as quickly, so city birds may just concentrate on being heard”.

City birdsong may be bouncing off the walls – but does it have the X factor?

Spring Is Here: The Gulls Say So

Well, Spring’s finally coming around: the tell tale sign for me is that the black-headed gulls are back. One flew over my head as I crossed the bridge on the way to work this morning; for your reference, they’re the ones that look like this:

Their reappearance is a good sign that the weather’s taking a turn for the better, because they bother to fly all the way from the Mediterranean just to hang out on cliffs in the UK and steal chips from British tourists. Kids these days, eh?

The Starling

I have a hard time believing that this story is true: it’s just too crazy – but the photos are good and hard to forge without more resources than your average internet prankster. So, here’s the tale as it was told to me…

There’s a company in the States that sells automatic car washers as a complete solution, including the washing system, cash box, installation of the building, etc. These are completely automated: you drive up, put your money into the machine, then drive through.

In any case; after the installation of a particular one of these machines, the owner noticed that the return from the machine was not so much as should be expected. Diagnostics were run and the cash processor seemed to be okay, so everybody was at a loss. The owner even went so far as to accuse the supplier’s staff of having keys to his cashbox, and returning to the scene to steal the money.

Eventually, at his wits end, the owner set up security cameras to try to catch the thief in the act. Here are some stills from the footage:

The first image. Yes, that’s a starling that’s just landed on the coin return slot.

And there’s the starling, wriggling in to the coin return slot, where, presumably, it’s pushing it’s way up into the cash box through the return chute.

The starling with some coins!

The starling’s dropped a couple of coins, but is still wriggling to get free of the slot with it’s remaining prize.

Apparently, they later determined that it was not one, but several, birds who were robbing the car wash. Following them discovered a cache of loose change on the roof of the car wash and beneath an exposed root of a nearby tree.

So; what do you think – real or fake?

Quacks Do Echo, Thank You Very Much

At long last, I feel justified! As a long-time arguer (as much out of reason as playing devil’s advocate) that a duck’s quack should make an echo just like any other sound, recent research reported by the BBC demonstrates the fallacy of the widely-accepted myth!

In other news, it looks like my suggestion to Paul to go in to Burger King and meet the manager paid off – Paul now has a job:

About time I updated… I have a job. Sure, it’s only at Burger King (I start on Wednesday morning) but it’s still a job. They’re keen to work around my studies, so I get more hours now and in the holidays, but during term time I just work evenings and weekends…..

Having fun getting an Infra-Red transmitter to work under Windows 2000/XP (Microsoft removed the Virtual COM ports because they thought it would confuse users) but it works fine now…

Stan has done no work in the bathroom or on the living room since I last updated, although a set of stepladders has appeared, suggesting he intends to work sometime in the near future, though I won’t hold my breath

We all had Toad in the Hole last night. I was consulted for culinary expertise, although I don’t know why. I can’t really cook. While we’re on the topic, I nearly conned Claire into doing some cooking, but she twigged half way through chopping the potatoes and went into the living room for a lie down to recover….

I’ve sneaked a copy of DVD Maestro onto Dan’s PC so now I can master a DVD at home and bring it to D&Cs to burn. Convenient, as I can’t find a SCSI DVD-Writer anywhere….

That’s all