what’s really remarkable about these
little hummingbirds is the amount of
effort that males put into their
displays so we found that they are on
their display territories for up to
eight months of the year a single male
will come back to the same territory
hour after hour for up to 6 to 8 hours a
day every day for those eight months we
call this float display where the male
floats back and forth hovering in front
of another bird and now they’re
copulating the male has actually gone
back he’s resting a foot on her but also
supporting his weight and that’s all the
contact the male will have with that
female and the female will now move off
and raise the young herself so this male
is singing at a rate of about two songs
per second one song every half second
and you can see that they’ll sit here
and do this same song over over and over
again it has some visual components to
it as well they’re opening up their beak
you can see they’re pink gape and
they’ll also be flicking their white
tail and it seems to be an alerting both
that the two other males that this male
is here on his territory so don’t mess
with him and don’t come into the
territory unless you want to pick a
fight or two females that this male is
present hummingbirds are of interest to
us because they’re one of three groups
which are known to learn their
vocalizations so we humans take learning
for granted because we use it all the
time when learning speeches youngsters
and learning new slang as adults in
Hmong birds though and among animals in
general it’s a relatively rare
phenomenon parrots can do it
songbirds can do it and hummingbirds are
the third group that can do it each male
has a single song type and it’s not
really a very complex song we hear it
almost is just a chirp but there is some
variation each male
a single song type of that song type may
be shared with some of their neighbors
and so we see song neighborhoods or
little vocal dialects previously people
have thought those songs were learned
because when you see that sort of
variation at a very small scale it’s
suggestive not of genetic differences
but that males are learning the song of
neighbors when they settle onto a
territory but what we found recently is
that these males will also occasionally
change from one song to another and so
they’re capable of learning as adults
which was something that hadn’t been
demonstrated in hummingbirds before
you
little hummingbirds is the amount of
effort that males put into their
displays so we found that they are on
their display territories for up to
eight months of the year a single male
will come back to the same territory
hour after hour for up to 6 to 8 hours a
day every day for those eight months we
call this float display where the male
floats back and forth hovering in front
of another bird and now they’re
copulating the male has actually gone
back he’s resting a foot on her but also
supporting his weight and that’s all the
contact the male will have with that
female and the female will now move off
and raise the young herself so this male
is singing at a rate of about two songs
per second one song every half second
and you can see that they’ll sit here
and do this same song over over and over
again it has some visual components to
it as well they’re opening up their beak
you can see they’re pink gape and
they’ll also be flicking their white
tail and it seems to be an alerting both
that the two other males that this male
is here on his territory so don’t mess
with him and don’t come into the
territory unless you want to pick a
fight or two females that this male is
present hummingbirds are of interest to
us because they’re one of three groups
which are known to learn their
vocalizations so we humans take learning
for granted because we use it all the
time when learning speeches youngsters
and learning new slang as adults in
Hmong birds though and among animals in
general it’s a relatively rare
phenomenon parrots can do it
songbirds can do it and hummingbirds are
the third group that can do it each male
has a single song type and it’s not
really a very complex song we hear it
almost is just a chirp but there is some
variation each male
a single song type of that song type may
be shared with some of their neighbors
and so we see song neighborhoods or
little vocal dialects previously people
have thought those songs were learned
because when you see that sort of
variation at a very small scale it’s
suggestive not of genetic differences
but that males are learning the song of
neighbors when they settle onto a
territory but what we found recently is
that these males will also occasionally
change from one song to another and so
they’re capable of learning as adults
which was something that hadn’t been
demonstrated in hummingbirds before
you
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