Baby Green Rump Parrot

Miss Judy brought over a bird clock the other day.  I love it, since it chimes each hour by a bird song.  The bird of the hour is featured on the face of the clock, and I need only look to see what feathered friend is singing at what time.  I already have a dilemma, since the white-breasted nuthatch listed is a RED breasted nuthatch, so I am in a quandary as to whether or not the song is correct.  I am now wondering about the other songs.  Just as if I was back in the French language classroom,  learning to pronounce phrases just so, or we just might be saying something quite rude or off color. 

So how accurate are these recordings of bird songs?  I am beginning an interesting book, The Charm of Birds, by Sir Edward Grey.  The preface set me to wondering.  
The author's wife makes a fascinating remark, "There are two reasons to account for the difficulty we find  in describing the songs of birds.  One is that those who listen intelligently to the birds' songs hear them so differently and the second is that the birds themselves, individual birds of one species, in a certain degree, vary. "  (Pamela Grey, author of "Shepherd's Crowns")


How amazing to realize that birds do NOT just recite the same notes, as our untrained ear would suggest, but vary those notes and songs, to make changes the other birds can distinguish.  

Baby Green Rump Parrot

The Cornell University of Ornithology sponsors FeederWatch, a citizen scientist program counting birds at your feeder throughout the winter.  They also send out information about birds.  Today they showed a video link to Green Rump Parrots growing up and how they learned their own names, and the names of their parents.  It is amazing that in the world of birds, this parrot not only can "say" a unique name for the father bird and the mother bird, but each baby bird learns his own name, and that of the others.  In the video it shows how the parent teaches these names within the short month before they fledge.

I set to wondering how the parent chose the name of each baby, and how the next batch would be named.  It is hard enough for a human parent to choose a name for the baby, even with a book of names to help.  Will they end up with the same name for a few of their offspring?    Duggars names all starting with the letter "J" would fit right in, and you would tell the family by some similar sound clue.



How amazing to realize that birds do NOT just recite the same notes, as our untrained ear would suggest, but vary those notes and songs, to make changes the other birds can distinguish.  And that the Green rump parrot teach their young a unique name.  Rather cherish the birds and protect them all the more.