What is a Songbird?

Songbirds include more than 5,000 bird species, which is nearly half of the world's birds. They belong to a group known as passerines.

• Songbirds have specially adapted feet with three toes facing forward and one toe facing backward. This allows them to grip onto a perch. Songbirds have a flexor tendon in their legs that clamps shut, locking their feet around the perch whenever they are squatting, and releasing only when they straighten their legs. This stops them from falling off their perches as they sleep.

• Songbirds range in size from tiny hummingbirds to comparatively large crows. They are mainly land birds that live in a wide variety of situations, from open grasslands to forests.

• One of the distinguishing features of songbirds is their well-developed, two-sided syrinx, or voice-producing structure. It is also sometimes called their 'song box.' In songbirds each side is controlled independently, allowing some to sing rising and falling notes simultaneously, like the Northern Cardinal. By using their two-sided voice box they start the note with one side then seamlessly switch to the other without stopping for breath. Although songbirds include some of the best songsters, such as thrushes, some have harsh voices like crows, and some do little or no singing.

• While some birds hatch knowing their adult songs, songbirds learn their vocal signals. Just like we have to learn how to speak, songbirds have to learn how to sing. They learn by listening to their parents while still in the nest. This also exposes young birds to the languages and tunes they will need to emulate once they hit breeding age. Following fledging, young birds practice the tunes they memorized as chicks until they’ve mastered the pitch, rhythm, and structure of the adult songs.

Songbirds Sing at Dawn (we’re not sure why)

• Birds may sing at any time of day, but songs are often more energetic, louder, and more frequent in the early morning hours. This concert may start as early as 4 a.m. and extend several hours until the sun has risen and temperatures begin to warm. Though there’s some evidence that the behavior helps maintain territories, experts still know very little about why songbirds concentrate their efforts at such an early hour.

• Songbirds use songs just as we use our language: to communicate to one another. Different tones, rhythms, and pitches give the songs different meanings, such as finding food and water or signaling danger to others. Some birds that live in the grasslands have flight songs. However, the largest portion of the songbirds' singing is done by male songbirds to court their mates and ward off other male birds. Male songbirds continually practice their singing to improve their chances in courtship.

   

How You Can Help
10 Simple Things You Can Do

#10 Say "No" to Pesticides

You can live a bird-friendly life by avoiding the use of toxic pesticides. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that we Americans douse our lawns with some 80 million pounds of pesticides a year – and at a rate 10 times higher than what the nation’s farmers apply to their crops, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The nation’s most widely used insecticides, called neonicotinoids or 'neonics,' are lethal to birds and to the insects that birds consume. Common weed killers used around homes, such as 2, 4-D and glyphosate (used in Roundup), can be toxic to wildlife, and glyphosate has been declared a probable human carcinogen. Insecticides also kill the insects that birds would like to be eating.

• One group at risk is birds that eat large quantities of foliage that might have been recently sprayed, such as waterfowl and game birds.

• Another group at risk is seed-eating songbirds, which are attracted to insecticide granules and pesticide-treated seeds.

• Species that gorge on pest insects, such as grasshoppers, are particularly vulnerable in times of pest outbreaks.

• Finally, scavengers and predators that take slow or disabled prey are at a high risk of ingesting other birds or mammals that have been poisoned.

Read more about pesticides at the American Bird Conservancy’s website.