Cowbirds are special among songbirds for the "watery" timbre of their singing, which resembles the sound of falling droplets striking water, a quick burst followed by a fading ripple. University of ...

Humans have long been fascinated by bird song and the cacophony of other avian sounds—from coos and honks to quacks and peeps. But little is known about how the unique vocal organ of birds—the ...

In 1964 it seemed as if the avian vocal organ, the syrinx, was a good place to start understanding the relation between brain and song. I started with chaffinches. I found that an alarmed chaffinch, ...

Birds tote around two vocal organs inside their bodies, but only one works. New interdisciplinary research suggests that this distinctly avian anatomy arose because birds, somewhere in their ...

Recent research has revealed a common genetic link between the larynx – the vocal organ of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians – and the syrinx – the vocal organ of birds. This figure illustrates the ...