It all started with swamp sparrows. The year was 2007, and our colleagues at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center had just concluded a study that involved 35 swamp sparrow chicks. Since they could ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. When the swamp sparrow sings, it looks almost proud, puffing out its ...

If you start listening to birds, you’ll realize that they have a species-specific sets of calls. Would you consider these songs a form of culture? Maybe, maybe not—but bird calls are passed down ...

Birdsongs are used extensively as models for animal signaling and human speech, offering a glimpse of how our own communicating abilities developed. A new study by Adrienne DuBois, a graduate student ...

The song of the swamp sparrow -- a grey-breasted bird found in wetlands throughout much of North America -- is a simple melodious trill. But according to a new study swamp sparrows are capable of ...

Few singers reach their sunset years with the same voice they had in younger days. Singing sparrows are no different. Duke University-led research reveals that elderly swamp sparrows don't sound quite ...

Researchers at Duke University recently took a major step toward better understanding how swamp sparrows use a combination of song and visual displays to communicate with one another. (Image via ...

For several reasons, swamp sparrows didn’t fit into the first two parts of this series, and European house sparrows really don’t belong on this continent, even though they have been here since the ...

OUR man Stanley has managed to penetrate a considerable distance into the swamp in Van Cortlandt Park that occasioned the recent fuss in municipal circles and letters-to-the-editor columns. For the ...

Scientists have long thought that a bird's vocal performance is a static characteristic-set once a song is learned. Yet, biologists now explain that songbirds can modulate vocal performance, when it ...