The Learning of Song Patterns by Birds, With Especial Reference to the Song of the Chaffinch Fringilla Coelebs

Abstract

SUMMARY 1. The songs and other vocalisations of birds are of theoretical interest to zoologists and psychologists (1) as social communication systems and as a “language”; (2) as specific and inter‐specific recognition marks; (3) as a problem in the inheritance and genetical control of elaborate behaviour patterns; and (4) as a problem in the acquistion of complex behaviour patterns by individual learning. The last two constitute the main objects of this work. 2. The Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs was chosen as the main subject of investigation because its song displays both inherited and individually learned components, the relation between which is of particular interest. It is considered that neither a chain reflex type of theory nor one of reflex conditioning in the ordinary sense will provide satisfactory explanation of song production. 3. The characteristics and normal limits of variation of song of wild F. c. coelebs and F. c. gengleri are described and illustrated. There is no certain means of distinguishing the songs of these two subspecies but fairly consistent local differences occur. A wild male Chaffinch usually has more than one song type and may have as many as six. Full song is practically unknown in the female. 4. The song of insular species and sub‐species and of artificially isolated populations tend to be simpler and less variable than examples from the Continent, possibly because, in a less dense population in an ecologically simpler environment, an individually distinctive territorial proclamation will not be so important for breeding success. 5. Experiments with F. c. gengleri were carried out in aviaries, bird rooms and cages. None of these techniques had any seriously adverse effect on the drive to sing. The onset of song could be controlled experimentally by crowding, by artificial control of daily illumination in a light‐proof room and by injection of testosterone propionate. 6. Birds caught as juveniles in their first autumn and isolated until the summer following produced nearly normal songs that are almost as elaborate as are those of wild Chaffinches. If such birds, instead of being individually isolated, are kept together in groups in such a manner that they can hear only the songs of the members of their own group, these birds (as a result of counter‐singing) copy one another and so come to produce a fairly uniform community pattern. Close matching of the final phrase of the song is particularly evident. 7. Birds which have been hand‐reared in auditory isolation from the fifth day of life produce extremely simple songs which represent the inborn component of the specific song. If such Kaspar Hauser birds are themselves grouped together in isolated communities from the third to the thirteenth month of life, each group will‐during the period February to May—build up, by mutual stimulation and imitation, complex but highly abnormal songs quite dissimilar from those of normal wild Chaffinches. From this it is clear that in the wild young Chaffinches learn some features of the song from th...

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