ABOVE: Male white-crowned sparrow in San Francisco
JN PHILLIPS
With less traffic and fewer people on the streets of San Francisco this spring, the songs of resident male white-crowned sparrows became more audible despite actually being quieter, according to a report in Science today (September 24). The birds also increased in the bandwidth of their songs to include lower notes, which, according to experts, makes them more appealing to the females of the species.
“It’s a very nice paper,” says Hans Slabbekoorn, who studies the effects of noise on animal behavior at Leiden University and was not involved in the research. “The data are very convincing that these birds adjusted immediately to the lower noise levels.”
In cities that are normally bustling, the sudden shutdown of schools, shops, restaurants, and places of work in mid-march this year virtually eliminated the buzz of traffic, construction, and people almost overnight. In the relative ...
