I used to think that only male birds sing in order to claim their territory or to attract a mate.  New research into bird communication, at least new to me, has revealed that is not true.

Just in case you haven’t noticed from some of my past posts, but I enjoy birds.  Birds are one of the easiest animals to observe and they are everywhere.  They are fun to watch and listen to when you can’t see them.  I have done a lot of reading and research about birds and their songs just to understand them better.  Contrary to what I thought, it turns out that many female birds do in fact sing.

What Is A Bird Song As Opposed To A Bird Call?

Birds make mainly two kinds of noises, calls and songs.  Here is an old post that goes into more detail explaining a bit about why birds sing.

The main difference between a call and song is that a call is a couple or few short notes, but a song is much longer and more complex.

Why Do Birds Sing?

The main reason that I always assumed that only male birds sing is the results of my research into why birds sing.  The different books and journals I’ve perused all say that the main reasons birds sing is to protect their territory and to attract a mate.  In fact, one book I use frequently as a good source of bird behavior, The Sibley Guide To Brid Life And Behavior, gives many examples of male birds singing.

For example, it asks, ‘…why males of some species sing so many songs?’  Or in another paragraph it talks about the songs of a male marsh wren.  Then later it talks about the songs of a male Chestnut-sided Warbler as an example of a bird using a territorial song.

All of those references to males songs sure seem to indicate that only males sing.  The Sibley Guide is a great book that helps understand bird behavior in general and then gives specifics on families of birds.  I refer to this book all of the time.  Just to be clear the book never says that only male birds sing, but every example it gives of a bird song is with a male.

Do Only Male Birds Sing?

NO.  Surprisingly, at least to me based on my past research and first hand observations the answer is no.

I used to think yes, but a study published in 2014 says that is not true.  The study (led by Karan Odom) found that 71% of female songbirds do in fact sing.

However, the study did find that most of those songbirds live in the tropics, not in the temperate areas of North America.  Birds live throughout the world from the poles to the tropics and there is variation in how those birds behave.  Most of my personal observations are of birds in North America, which apparently do not accurately reflect most songbirds worldwide.