Sound degradation as a distance cue in great tit (Parus major) song

Summary

We report an experiment designed to test the ideas that: 1. male songbirds can use cues from the distortion of song by environmental factors (degradation) to estimate the distance of another singing male; 2. song degradation is assessed by reference to an internal standard. Great tits respond more strongly to undegraded than to degraded songs when both are played at the same amplitude and from the same position in the territory. This difference in response is shown only if the playback song is “familiar” to the test bird; familiar songs being those sung either by the test bird or neighbours of the test bird. We interpret these results as evidence that cues from song degradation can be used to estimate the distance of a singing conspecific and that degradation assessment is only possible if the bird has an internal representation of the song (because either it and/or a neighbour sings the song). We discuss the implications of these results for Morton's (1982) ranging hypothesis, and for the distinction between learning and performance in bird song. Our results partially support the ranging hypothesis, but question the nature of “unrangeable” songs sensu Morton. The finding that birds can assess the degree of degradation of songs that they do not sing, supports the idea that birds learn more songs than they sing.