42. Once you are attuned, every singing bird becomes interesting.
6. Song Learning Often Creates Complex Songs and Large Repertoires
How a repertoire is delivered
From page 97 in the book.
Once you are attuned, every singing bird becomes interesting. Once you are attuned to the different songs that a male can sing, every singing bird becomes interesting. For those birds who routinely sing with "eventual variety," you will be curious to know how many times a male repeats a given song type before switching to another, and how the patterns might change throughout the day, from the first songs of the morning during the dawn chorus until well after the sun is up. Just how does the male vary his presentation to express himself? As you listen, you may come to agree that the more intense the singing, the more likely it is that a male will switch to "immediate variety," with successive songs all different, as with the eastern towhee, spotted towhee, and black-throated sparrow examples just above in the book (see also "Energized Dawn Singing," p. 112). Collect some numbers and quantify what you hear. How many songs does he sing each minute, for example, and how many times does he switch from one song type to another? Try plotting your numbers on a graph, with "singing rate" and "percentage of different successive songs" as your axes, and you will begin to see how he programs his performance (see pages 118-119 for sample graphs for the red-winged blackbird).