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ORIGINAL: durnedwolf

So I'm guessing I need to put meat in the feeder for this bird... Would beef jerky be OK?

What is this anyway - a Great White Seagul?

ORIGINAL: fcooke

Oddly enough I have been seeing more diverse bird life recently. More blue jays, robins, etc. And then a couple of days ago a pair of starlings. I thought they usually stayed pretty close to the ocean. We are about 75 miles from the ocean. But they are fun to watch. I still have never caught our blue heron taking a fish. But I did see our bear a few days ago. she and I have an agreement we won't eat each other.

ORIGINAL: fcooke

Oddly enough I have been seeing more diverse bird life recently. More blue jays, robins, etc. And then a couple of days ago a pair of starlings. I thought they usually stayed pretty close to the ocean. We are about 75 miles from the ocean. But they are fun to watch. I still have never caught our blue heron taking a fish. But I did see our bear a few days ago. she and I have an agreement we won't eat each other.

Most bird species are slow to change their tune, preferring to stick with tried-and-true songs to defend territories and attract females. Now, with the help of citizen scientists, researchers have tracked how one rare sparrow song went "viral" across Canada, traveling over 3,000 kilometers between 2000 and 2019 and wiping out a historic song ending in the process. The study, publishing July 2 in the journal Current Biology, reports that white-throated sparrows from British Columbia to central Ontario have ditched their traditional three-note-ending song in favor of a unique two-note-ending variant—although researchers still don't know what made the new song so compelling.

"As far as we know, it's unprecedented," says senior author Ken Otter, a biology professor at the University of Northern British Columbia. "We don't know of any other study that has ever seen this sort of spread through cultural evolution of a song type." Although it's well known that some bird species change their songs over time, these cultural evolutions tend to stay in local populations, becoming regional dialects rather than the norm for the species. This is how the two-note ending got its start.

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

So the male birds did change their tune and are doing so again. The question is, does it help get the females:[&:]

Twenty-year study tracks a sparrow song that went 'viral' across Canada

Most bird species are slow to change their tune, preferring to stick with tried-and-true songs to defend territories and attract females. Now, with the help of citizen scientists, researchers have tracked how one rare sparrow song went "viral" across Canada, traveling over 3,000 kilometers between 2000 and 2019 and wiping out a historic song ending in the process. The study, publishing July 2 in the journal Current Biology, reports that white-throated sparrows from British Columbia to central Ontario have ditched their traditional three-note-ending song in favor of a unique two-note-ending variant—although researchers still don't know what made the new song so compelling.

"As far as we know, it's unprecedented," says senior author Ken Otter, a biology professor at the University of Northern British Columbia. "We don't know of any other study that has ever seen this sort of spread through cultural evolution of a song type." Although it's well known that some bird species change their songs over time, these cultural evolutions tend to stay in local populations, becoming regional dialects rather than the norm for the species. This is how the two-note ending got its start.

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-twenty-ye ... viral.html