From the book

“These birds have so much to say about themselves. When the males first return from migration, listen in forest clearings or abandoned fields; their four-to five-second-long, sharply enunciated songs contain mostly paired, often husky phrases, like fire fire where where heeerrre my my run run run faster faster safe safe pheeeewwww. . . .”

“Here are the songs of four different male indigo buntings. Listen to the rhythm and quality of each song. Hear the consistent pattern in each male’s songs (though he doesn’t always finish his song) and how different the song of each male is from that of the others. Each of these males learned his song from a nearby adult so that little micro-dialects often occur, sometimes with just two neighboring males singing identical songs.”