Most birders know that males of many bird species sing. Less well known is that females of many species sing too – and that their songs can often be equally beautiful and complex. In fact, recent research shows that females sing in about 2/3 of songbird species, and that female songs likely evolved alongside male songs in the early ancestors of modern songbirds.
Yet, female songs are greatly underrepresented in recording collections. For researchers to understand how songbirds evolved their diverse songs, we need recordings of female songs from around the world. This is a daunting task. The Cornell Lab of Ornitholgy's The Female Bird Song Project is asking birders, like yourself, to help observe and record female songs through your eBird checklists.
Read more at: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/femalebirdsong17/
