FINCHforum

Many of my birds have different calls than all the other ones I have observed. Why is this?


Some examples:

- My male gouldian's contact call is lower-pitched and slower than other males': shureeeeee
- His aggressive call is similar: shreeeep!
- His song starts with 1-2 aggressive calls followed by 1-2 contact calls and then a hiss

- Female gouldian has a harsher call; kind of a more monotone, deeper version of male's

- My society finches do not make cricket noises, while the females at stores and pet events do
- Their distress call is sharper and louder than others': chirreeep! chirrreeep!
- They also start flying more loudly once they join the flight


Basically, only my Java finches sound normal.

Icearstorm

I have a society finch (CackleJax) with the worse hyena laugh of a society song (no one copies him thank goodness).

And a male gouldian, Merlin that mimics my whistle and its now spreading to several of my juvies in their flight cages in small parts of their songs. It actually makes their songs louder, because they are trying to "out-whistle" me when I whistle....and each other at the same time. Friendly competition. I like it because they belt it out much louder than the soft "trilling" sounds I hear from the rest of the males.

Since the males learn from their dad, when it comes to captive finches, I think some part of their song must come from our environment.

So for my gouldians, they apparently think I am a "dude".

Babs

That's interesting. Are gouldians raised by a louder species also more vocal?

For some reason, my older juvenile society finch seems to be copying the other male, Tacocat (my pets tend to get odd names), rather than his father. They were in separate cages for a while, so perhaps the juvenile just likes Tacocat's song more? Tacocat is the more dominant male, so that could explain it.

I find it odd that many birds from a variety of sources have the same calls, but mine sound different. I have heard at least four male gouldians do the contact call, and only mine sounds different. I believe mine and one other I heard came from the same breeder, as they were both from the same store down in Orlando. The other gouldian from that store sounds the same as two others I heard in a Pet Supermarket near Jacksonville, so it seems unlikely that those three came from the same place, but mine came from a different environment. My male gouldian seems better quality than the other three in terms of color, and to a lesser extent conformation; I doubt this would result in a different voice, but who knows.

Birds pick up their calls from their parents and peers growing up. More with songs than chirps, but chirps to an extent too. All society finches have unique songs, with babies usually learning the basis of their song from their father, but in my experience never copying it completely. When fostered by multiple males, they sing songs which combine aspects of both. I had several males, raised by multiple males, sing songs which consisted of both totally different courtship songs back to back, others which started as one and ended as the other. Most, however, combined random elements from both together in a mishmash. But they definitely learned from multiple tutors.

My neighbor has a male society I gave her, with its mother, before it was fully weaned. The female continued to feed it with her, but the baby didn't have a tutor to learn to sing from. Now an adult, this society's song consists completely of the buzzing noises its mother made when sitting in the nest, with a zebra beep at the end, because it lives under two cages of zebras. The wackiest song!

I experimented when I had a lot of birds breeding at once a few years ago with some cross-fostering to see what happened and got some fun results. A male society finch I had named Olive who was hatched and raised by Javas didn't chirp like a society as an adult, it had a very weird call intermediate between the hoarse male society chirp and the click sound of a Java. Its brother raised by societies sounded normal. Its song was similar to that of the society raised only by a female and consisted of nothing but the sounds its parents made in the nest - Java clicking and "growling" - not java singing notes, with a single squeaky society note at the end it copied from its biological father when it started hanging with the other societies after weaning.

Interestingly, though, a zebra later raised by the same Java foster parents didn't change its calls at all. It beeped like normal and gravitated immediately to the other zebras after fledging and learned the natural song, whereas the societies grew up associating equally with the javas and their own kind and not really distinguishing either as different from themselves. The zebra never went back to hang with the javas after weaning but the fostered societies would snuggle with them at night for months.

Some finches also learn the song of a bird not their parent, I don't know why, but at one point I had three spice chicks born in my aviary. Only their parents fed them, but as they grew up, one of the to boys developed a fixation on one particular society finch, as if he idolized him. He followed him everywhere and copied his song almost flawlessly, except that he sang it at a higher pitch. It was so much louder and more melodic than the song his father (and every other spice I ever saw), that it was surprising he could copy it so precisely. His brother, meanwhile, learned the same buzzy, quiet song of his father.

The confused society would sing his song to society girls and get them to let him mate, something the spices with natural songs tried but never succeeded in. I wondered if it was possible the confused male learned the society song on purpose in order to get a mate, since the brother bonded to their sister and he was the odd one out, but I doubt they're smart enough to consciously make that connection.

When I first used Societies as fosters, I had no problem with whole clutches of Blue-capped Cordon Bleus and Strawberries maintaining their natural songs. However, I once had a single Blue-capped Cordon Bleu fostered by Societies. I left him with the Societies too long, as one day I heard this very weird song coming from him--a combination of the Society and BCCB song! I put him with BCCBs, and he eventually lost the Society 'accent'.

Sheather and Sally

It sounds like the critical period for tone and pattern is likely from fledging to juvenile, so it would be highly unlikely that the adults' would change much. Perhaps the volume is dependent on current environment; this could explain why my birds' calls are typically louder than those of others.

I've come to the conclusion, that each species has their own basic natural songs and sounds, which I think they would use even if handraised by silent humans.

If raised primarily by humans who make a certain sound on a regular basis, the chicks will pick up on that sound, be it a whistle or certain words, mimicking it and adding it to their own songs and sounds.

If raised exclusively by parents, they pick up parental sounds and songs in the nest, to which they add their own flavour.

If raised in an area where there are other species sounding off, they will incorporate some of these other sounds into their repertoire as adults, (which is interesting particularily when it's species from other parts of the world).

And yet....

Luciano, my Canary, was housed as a young adult (and an only Canary) with Societies for quite some time . He began trying to mimic Society song (which was quite awful) to impress a Socie girl whom he had a crush on (she btw was not impressed). However the minute Canary girls were introduced into the mix, Luciano almost immediately reverted back to Canary songs and sounds, which he taught to his sons.

My male Gouldians, both bought and home raised, all have a soft lisping whispering song, to which they all listen to very attentively.

My newest Zebra male, has a raucaus, rusty song, (which sounds like a strangling duck) which thankfully none of the other Zebras have, and which the females back away from in disgust.

My two young Fawn Socie brothers, came in with a lovely little song which was really sweet to listen to, but which sadly they seem to be losing after spending time with the rest of the Socie crew.

My Javas (who came in as unmoulted juvies) are mimicking Society songs lately.

It's actually quite a fascinating field, if one wanted to make a study of it.

I had a pair of zebras, with normal meeps and songs, raise a clutch of six. At about 2 months old, babies were separated from parents, and put into a cage next to a dozen normal-sounding zebras.

Only one of the six was male. He does not meep, he SQUAWKS!.
All day long, SQUAWK! SQUAWK! SQUAWK!. Sounds rather like a surprised noise. He does also sing, but no meep, just SQUAWK.
Three of his sisters went to someone else. Two, I have. And one of them is now a loud Squawker, the other not so loud so not sure if she just squawks or also meeps, since with a dozen other zebras, a bunch of owls, and a bunch of societies, it's hard to indentify individual normal calls.

But I cannot figure out where the SQUAWK! came from.

lovezebs
Bird sounds seem to be a relatively new field of study in ornithology, and are definitely interesting to learn about. They've discovered that wild birds develop accents, and some songbirds will gang up on a bird with a different accent and chase it out. Some songbirds will also learn the songs of their neighbors and use them while countersinging. I find whydas especially interesting; certain species learn their host's song and use it in courtship with their own species.

Gracie85
Did you happen to own a parrot, by any chance?

Gracie85

Were there any parrots in the vicinity?

Icearstorm

I've read about the different dialects from different localities, which I find quite fasciating. All to do with different family groups and tribes, etc.

No parrots. I do have parakeets, but nobody makes a noise like that. And, these zebra finches were on loan to the local high school, so the six babies were with only their parents for the first 8 weeks. No other birds in the entire building.

Here are a few short videos of my society finches singing; Patches' song now sounds much better and almost identical to Tacocat's.

Laser

Tacocat

Patches' Subsong

Are there any sites that only use the audio portion of the video? The visual quality is quite bad.

Very nice tidy cage! This is a good topic! My 2 male society finches have very different songs. Bed Head's song is the same note 4 times then up the scale. Bed Buddy's song is like a squeaky wheel 4 notes up the scale and then one note bk down. Strange to me that each song ( although different) consists of four note range. Anyone else know how many notes their societies sing in their song?