The Wisdom of Birds

This chapter is concerned with how birds know what to sing.

The way birds acquire their beautiful songs has fascinated ornithologists for a long time. The Eurasian bullfinch Pyrrhula pyrrhula is an unusual song bird in that it has a very quiet and rather dull song – said to be about as melodic as a squeaky wheelbarrow. Yet this species has played a central role in understanding how birds acquire their songs. Starting in the nineteenth century German foresters trained captive bullfinches to whistle two or sometimes three separate folksongs. Such birds were expensive, and were owned only by the rich and famous, including the Victorian supermodel Lizzie Siddall, Queen Victoria and the Tsar.

During the 1950s and 60s the German ornithologist Juergen Nicolai (above left) used these whistling bullfinches to understand how they acquired and perfected their songs. Click the play button above to hear Juergen Nicolai tell (in German) a bullfinch-trainer (i.e. a person) to whistle a folktune. Then click the play button below to hear the bullfinch whistle the tune – remarkable!