Migrating Birds Sing to Team Up with Other Species

image via New Scientist

January 15, 2025, 4:00 PM

• •Solitary migrating songbirds seem to cooperate across species and possibly share information with other solo travelers about who they were and what to watch out for ahead.
• •The findings, published on Wednesday in Current Biology, add to growing evidence that interspecies social interactions may influence songbirds’ migratory behavior far more than was previously believed.
• •The new study suggests such partnerships could play a more significant role than researchers realized.

Tiny songbirds such as cardinals and warblers migrate thousands of miles, flying at night and resting during the day, to and from their wintering grounds—and unlike many larger birds, they forego flocks and travel separately. But new research suggests they're not entirely alone in the dark sky. Benjamin Van Doren, an ornithologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and his colleagues set up ground-based microphones at 26 sites across Eastern North America and collected more than 18,300 hours of bird flight calls. The researchers found that solitary migrating songbirds seem to cooperate across species and possibly share information with other solo travelers about who they were and what to watch out for ahead.

Read original article