Hi! This is my contribution page to Yellowhammers.🕊
If you are curious about these creatures...You've come to the right place!👋
Here you will find some hopefully-fun facts, but (un)fortunately, due to author bias, the main focus will be on their charming melodies.🎶
So if you're ready...Feel free to dive in and explore!💫
If you're in a hurry, skip to 2. First phrase
Yellowhammers are a common passerine bird species distributed throughout Eurasia, New Zealand, and Australia, mostly non-migratory with partial exceptions for some Eastern Europe populations. Originally from grassland, they have well-adapted to agricultural landscapes, preferably lowland farmland with open space and shrub patches. Although they are widely distributed, they have been suffering population decline in the last 20-30 years mainly due to habitat destruction. As means of conservation, they were even elected as the Bird of the Year by the Czech Ornithological Society in 2011, so our hopes are high to make history again...👑
Yellowhammer males, like many other birds, sing to attract mates and defend their territory during breeding season.
Their songs have 2 parts: the first phrase(or initial phrase) and the dialect.
But a picture (song, in this case😉) is worth a thousand words! Try clicking on this little guy:
Did you hear the two different parts of the song?😊
The more rhythmic, fast-tempoed ‘chit,chit,chit,chit’, is the first phrase, and if your ears were sharp enough, you may have even heard the differences between each song! One singing male can have multiple types of first phrases, usually 1 to 4, and we call this 'combination of first phrases': a repertoire. Each bird's repertoire is stable in time, which means once they have learned their own unique repertoire, they don't change it! Now this helps us a lot on the field, especially when you are a bio-acoustician! (Ask me if you want to know more🤭)
The longer, whistle-like latter part, ‘dee-doo-’ (sometimes just the first ‘dee-’) is the dialect, which is shared within locality, or neighbours. Meaning if you go to Prague, they will be all singing the same ‘dee-doo-‘, but when you go to Paris, they will all be singing ‘dee-tee-‘! Actually, the dialects are more dense and diverse but if you’re more curious about the dialects, see 3. Dialects.
Isn’t it amazing, that they have such distinct features in one song? Different features, possibly different meanings, different meanings, possibly different functions! Now this is where it all gets interesting but I won't overwhelm you with details here... Maybe here!
If you came from my poster, here's the more interesting part for you!
I have put in each phrase type songs in each image. Try listening, maybe focusing on the shared types: "Type a" and "Type b".
Well, what do you think?
Does 'Bird A's Type a' sound the same to 'Bird B's Type b'? Does Bird D's all 3 types sound different? Or do all the songs just sound the same?
I would love to hear your thoughts, which will help me a lot with my current work.
So please come talk anytime, or if you missed me: 5. About me😊
Yellowhammer dialects only have a few types across all populations.
Considering how widely distributed they are, it's quite fascinating that we can literally count them down!
Here are the dialect types:
If your ears were sharp enough, you would have heard two different dialects from our guy from Section 1.
Guess which dialects they were! And if you're one smart detective...You'll notice a small error in this '(a) guy'. Do you see my hint?🧐
Our team has contributed almost a decade to the nation-wide citizen science project to map out the dialects of Czech Yellowhammers. It was a great success, leading to so many fascinating discoveries!
(EN)'Dialects of Yellowhammers': http://www.yellowhammers.net/
(CZ)'Projektu Nářečí českých strnadů': https://www.strnadi.cz/
Just a little teaser, we may or may not be preparing ver.2...So stay tuned👀
Diblíková, L., Pipek, P., Vosolsobě, S., Petrusek, A., & Petrusková, T. (2023). Reevaluation of dialect boundaries in the Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) based on citizen science data: Should we split or lump?. Avian Research, 14, 100115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avrs.2023.100115
Pipek, P., Petrusek, A., Petrusková, T., Diblíková, L., & v časopise Živa, V. Jedna píseň tucetkrát jinak. https://ziva.avcr.cz/files/ziva/pdf/jedna-pisen-tucetkrat-jinak.pdf
Thank you for coming this long! I hope you enjoyed your journey with my little birds.🕊
If you want to know, discuss, chat more... Please feel free to bother me in any possible way!
I am more than happy to be all ears:)👂It is what I am best at if you haven't noticed!😉
