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And the World’s Greatest Singer Is …
Posted by Steve Martindale at 5:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Ah, spring … the hills are alive, the sound of music is filling the air with magic, with bird songs that reveal musical creativity and greatness. Listening to those beautiful notes makes me think about who my favorite singer is, and so after some internal deliberation, I would like to offer my candidate for the World’s Greatest Singer: the blue-headed vireo. Yes, brown thrashers have huge repertoires, and winter wrens go on forever. And yes, humpback whales show off with a mind-boggling range of frequencies and cadences, moods and emotions. But let me state my case for the overlooked vireos, then you can nominate your own candidate.
The thing about vireos is that, in the spring at least, they sing for several hours a day. And singing so much requires musical virtuosity to keep listeners from tuning you out. This is especially true of the red-eyed vireo, who can toss out a repertoire of about 100 short songs at the rate of one every second or two nearly all day long. But their chirpy songs grate on my ears compared to the sweet, pure slurs of blue-headed vireos, and this is about my choice for musical talent, after all. These vireos sing about 20 different short songs with pauses in between, so they sound like this, slowing down the cadence just enough for our human ears to comprehend—with a bit of help from the computer, that is, since avian ears are much faster than ours.
To bolster my case for these melodic and talented singers, I offer two secrets revealed by the computer. One is the creative way vireos sequence their territorial songs: pure jazz. Let’s assign each song a letter to keep track of them. The birds tend to repeat strings for awhile: a-b-c-d-e—a-b-c-d-e…, and then switch to e-f-g-h-i—e-f-g-h-i … keeping you on your toes. And every so often, they punctuate their phrasing with a random song or a combined song, which catches you off guard, in the same way that jazz does: a-b-c-q-s or e-f-g-x-z. Just when you think they are getting boring—bam—they mix it up so that you wonder what’s coming next. For jazz artistry, I must give blue-headed vireos the nod.
Excerpt from a repeated string of songs: a-b-c-d-e-a-b
My second reason for nominating them is the vocal display used when they are really pumped up and excited—during the act of mating, for example. The male throws all patience to the wind and struts his musical stuff—the vocal equivalent of peacock feathers, I suppose. This outpouring has no pauses—it’s a conglomeration of songs, meows, growls, and squeaks. It is repeated virtually verbatim and entails split-second timing, practiced to perfection. The acoustic excursions in these rambles are off the charts, spanning the singer’s entire range of sound frequencies and tonal nuances, with changes occurring in a split second. Vocal acrobatics: it’s the avian version of combining rap with opera! Can you beat that?
Spanning the range, very fast
By the way, male blue-headed vireos help incubate the eggs in the nest, which is what the male in the photo is doing. He sometimes sings while there, but that’s a more relaxed, monotonous sequence of songs, to keep in touch with his mate rather than to impress.
So that’s my vote. Let’s hear yours: Who is the greatest singer of all? Have some links to some great singing online? Post them here so that we can all enjoy.
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Scott says...
April 8th, 2009, 7:43 am
Wonderful post Steve! So hard to choose the World’s Greatest Singer. I’m tempted to nominate the Northern Mockingbird. I was one of the 35,000 in ‘88 at PETA’s Animal Rights Music Festival http://www.peta.org/about/victories3.asp and will never forget a mockingbird landing in the scaffolding and singing along with Natalie Merchant’s piano performance. But Mockingbirds are sort of lounge singers in a way, so perhaps we should go with the bird whose song that famous revolutionary Thomas Jefferson wrote about: the wood thrush! http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio.do?id=11308
kerry says...
April 8th, 2009, 12:39 pm
I love to hear the trumpeting cry of the California Quail when we scatter sunflower seeds in our back yard. Its like they are shouting with joy and calling their family to the feast
Bob says...
April 8th, 2009, 4:10 pm
Chickadee-dee-dee, the call of the black-capped chickadee can even be heard in the winter but this tiny bird with its cheerful call greets us more enthusiastically in the spring with that and a different shorter call. In the winter it daintily selects a seed at a time from the feeder and flies away while the other birds sit there and gorge.
The song, plus the perky personality make the chickadee my all-around favorite.
Sherif Hamdy says...
April 9th, 2009, 12:00 pm
Hey Everyone,
I thought you might be interested in the below link:
http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/feature/top-40-bird-songs.cfm
Lots of bird sounds that you can sample!
Personally, I really like how the Grey Butcherbird sounds
jude says...
April 10th, 2009, 2:40 pm
My favorite song is the cardinal. It is so crisp and clear.
Mrs. Lois Koch says...
April 10th, 2009, 4:57 pm
When I was still at my home in Ohio, I woke up early and noticed some cardinals around what one would assume to be the “chief”. He seemed to be giving instructions to the rest of them. The others did not interrupt him at all. When he was finished, all of them flew to different directions. I really thought that was something so special.
Steve says...
April 25th, 2009, 2:02 pm
Well, let’s see: mockingbirds, wood thrushes, chickadees, cardinals….all good choices, to be sure. And the grey butcherbird - fabulous stuff. But this was sent to me as well, and does deserve some consideration: a bird who perfectly mimics camera shutters, car alarms, and chain saws, in addition to melodic songs. Quite astounding, really. http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=wccu28bhk3
-Steve
Matt says...
August 24th, 2009, 11:59 am
Surely the best singer in the world is….. Peter Singer?