Under the Tanzanian skies, some thrush nightingale males reside in close proximity to each other, a striking contrast to their territorial behavior during breeding season in temperate zones. With the end of winter, a dual transformation unfolds in the birds: the emergence of full songs and territorial behavior.
Over five years, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence decoded their connection in the birds' winter quarters. They could show that the annual melodious development of
One such bird is the thrush nightingale, which migrates from temperate zones during breeding season to the tropics in winter. Whereas all-year resident tropical songbirds usually displaythroughout the year, little is known about the role of territoriality of migrating birds in their winter quarters. Henrik Brumm and his team conducted an extensive field study in Southern Tanzania, the winter quarters of many thrush nightingales, to find out if and how territoriality comes to play here.
Thrush nightingales, like many other birds, annually embark on a melodious development of song—progressing from subsong to plastic song and finally to the crystallized full song for the season. The males cycle through this development every year, with their final song emerging with the start of the breeding season. Subsong does not contain any memorized materials and is soft and highly variable.
The presence of full song increased from none at the start of winter to about half of the observed population at the time of departure to their. Interestingly, the full songsters were never found to settle close to each other. Plastic songsters in contrast settled close to each other as well as close to full songsters. Notably, territorial behaviors were observed among full songsters but not towards or among plastic songsters, indicating a connection between song and territoriality.
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