Songbirds use 'dawn chorus' to gather intelligence

<body leftmargin="0" bgcolor="#000060" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFF00" vlink="#FF9900"> <b> <h1 class="title"><font face="Arial" size="4">Songbirds use ' dawn chorus' to gather intelligence</font></h1> </b><p class="title"><font face="Arial" size="1">Posted July 31<br> World Science staff</font> <b> <font size="2"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><br> <br> <br> Songbirds whose sweet tittering wakes us up in the morning may have an unexpected use for their "dawn chorus": spying on rivals.  </span></font> </b> </p> <p class="title"><b><font size="2"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Songbirds who lack their own territory use the daily chorus of singing to gather intelligence on their rivals' control of property, researchers propose. Writing in the May issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, they report that male songbirds -- outfitted with radio tags that let researchers track them, and placed in a new area -- made long excursions to check on their new rivals during the dawn. Later in the day they settled down.  </span></font></b> </p> <p class="title"><b><font size="2"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"> The birds "do quite the same thing as birdwatchers usually do when they investigate territory numbers in a songbird population: just counting the singing males during the hour before sunrise, because at that time of the day one can be quite sure that everybody sings," says the lead researcher, Valentin Amrhein, who is affiliated with the University of Basel in Switzerland.</span></font> </p> </b> </body>