Woodpecker song treatment by eBird (1 Viewer)

[01101001]

These two clips were marked as songs by their respective recordists. Contrary to these labels, eBird has them described as calls in the respective species' accounts. Do any other non-Cornell-affiliated sources support this treatment?

ML213502081 - Middle Spotted Woodpecker - Macaulay Library

Macaulay Library ML213502081; © Peter Boesman; Zeeland, Netherlands

macaulaylibrary.org

ML202419921 - Lesser Spotted Woodpecker - Macaulay Library

Macaulay Library ML202419921; © Miguel Rodríguez Esteban; Salamanca, Castilla y León, Spain

macaulaylibrary.org

EDIT: I've already checked with Ornitho.de, XC, Collins, The Sound Approach (as to LSW) and Hume's RSPB guide (as to MSW).

 

[Butty]

One wo/man's call is another wo/man’s song.
I think you would be helped in queries like this by referring to The Birds of the Western Palearctic (ie the original, not Concise). It contains an academic treatment and classification of all the calls of everything (as known at time of publication).

 

[01101001]

That's a good idea -- I will. Is this the one (I want to make sure before I place an order that will be processed for upwards a week)?
(the title is in English, but the catalogue website has no English version)

Szczegółowy opis | Prosto do informacji - katalog zbiorów polskich bibliotek naukowych

NUKAT - centralny katalog zbiorów polskich bibliotek naukowych. Znajdź potrzebny Ci tytuł i sprawdź, które biblioteki go udostępniają.

katalog.nukat.edu.pl

Only the DVD version and the concise print version are available.

 

[Butty]

Yes, but I'd beware of BWP-i: I've an inkling it may not work under current operating systems. The original BWP will certainly be available second-hand. As I indicated, BWP Concise is a different thing and I don't know how it treats voice.

 

[01101001]

Thanks. I hope the availability of books will serendipitously match the availability of modern computers so that everything turns out fine.

 

[01101001]

Do any other non-Cornell-affiliated sources support this treatment?

EDIT: I've already checked with Ornitho.de, XC, Collins, The Sound Approach (as to LSW) and Hume's RSPB guide (as to MSW).

(Just wanted to make it clear that all of the above (appear to) disagree with eBird's emendation and agree with the recordists' initial assessment.)

 

[Jim M.]

(Just wanted to make it clear that all of the above (appear to) disagree with eBird's emendation and agree with the recordists' initial assessment.)

"Songbirds" are typically thought of as being those in the order Passeriformes. Woodpeckers of course are not in that order, and I never thought of them as having "songs". Looking at the descriptions in my Sibley guide, I don't see any species accounts that describe any woodpecker vocalizations as being "songs". Instead it refers to "contact calls," "drums," and "calls".

 

[jogresh]

One wo/man's call is another wo/man’s song.

Yes I had a similar thought.

The LSW on your link 01101001, I'd prob call it one of the contact calls which is analogous to a song, ie it's used in the breeding season to advertise territory etc etc.
Though iirc, one of the books says this call can be given year-round (but so can a Robins song), come to think of it I think I've heard this in the autumn on the Algarve.
I suppose its a bit academic really? 🤔🤷🐦

 

[01101001]

It also matters for eBird's breeding codes or other breeding estimates.

"Songbirds" are typically thought of as being those in the order Passeriformes. Woodpeckers of course are not in that order, and I never thought of them as having "songs". Looking at the descriptions in my Sibley guide, I don't see any species accounts that describe any woodpecker vocalizations as being "songs". Instead it refers to "contact calls," "drums," and "calls".

Yes, you're right, but--in Europe--Eurasian Green Woodpecker and Grey-headed Woodpecker are generally agreed to have songs. So does Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Middle Spotted Woodpecker, Black Woodpecker and Wryneck (effectively, only the two Dendrocopos sp. lack them). For example, more than a third of all foreground XC recordings of MSW are songs; almost 80% for Wryneck. They're not songs strictly speaking, but they are sounds considered to be their equivalent -- much like drumming should be marked marked as 'singing' in eBird's checklists, from what I read in the descriptions of the breeding codes. Also owls, pigeons and cuckoos don't sing in the narrow sense of the word, and yet their vocalisations are labelled as songs for the sake of convenience.

EDIT: If eBird wants to institute new nomenclature for Eurasian woodpeckers, it should be applied consistently to all 'singing' woodpeckers, not just some genera. Currently, the changes apply to all black, white and red ones but no green, yellow and brown ones, ostensibly -- nothing to do with the philogenetic tree: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Tg_OPpK9...1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-13+at+7.41.49+PM.png.

For the latter group, anything goes:

Picus viridis/canus call

I was trying to research the difference between the 'territorial' calls (also described as songs) of Eurasian Green and Grey-headed Woodpeckers--and the difference seemed pretty clear cut ('krri' calls vs plaintive whistled notes)--when I came across this recording (Boris N. Veprintsev; Ryazan...

www.birdforum.net

One reason might be that green, yellow and brown ones are absent from the ABA area.

Such things wouldn't happen if there were a transparent and effective mechanism of communication with the public. And, being a dilettante myself, I'm not supposed to be the first person to discover these and other eBird ID issues, like taking moulting males, labelled as males in the checklist, labelling them as females in the app/on the website because there were not enough female photos available & no one will notice (this time, not woodpeckers).

EDIT 2: Some of the irrelevant parts crossed out.

 

[Butty]

They're not songs strictly speaking

I don't think there are any, given that there isn't a workable definition. You could make up a definition, but it would be a personal one and very doubtfully of universal application. As Jog points out, a song is functionally an advertising-call - so the useful distinction (if any) to be made (especially in groups not usually held to 'sing') is between (non-advertising-)call and advertising-call - not between call and song. Nature (for English-speakers) is full of such examples of terms applied inconsistently, even haphazardly, to things/phenomena for oddball historical/cultural reasons that lack a decent biological basis, eg some (essentially just a taxonomically-random selection of) fungi are called mushrooms. Such terms, like 'song', are harmless and useful in day-to-day usage but are best dropped, or used for only secondary purposes, in wider and more learned analyses - as in BWP.

 

[01101001]

I'll see how BWP treats them (though I suspect it overlaps with Collins for both and The Sound Approach for LSW, which have them as songs), but, meanwhile, there should be at least another category for advertising calls, as there is no distinction now (more important than specific nomenclature).

(And the above long message is not directed against anybody personally, more against institutional inertia or somesuch.)

 

[jogresh]

Point noted about breeding bird surveys and the requirement to record vocalisations for breeding evidence. Easy for, say, Wood Warbler, but I suppose technically drumming is then the equivalent - as I don't hear Peckers drumming outside the breeding season.
As an aside, I've heard wintering Wryneck on the Algarve do their call/song, so I guess we arrive at a point someone made earlier - they're not songbirds, so breeding evidence should be based on something else (creating nest hole, drumming, courtship etc for example) 🤔🤷

 

[01101001]

Point noted about breeding bird surveys and the requirement to record vocalisations for breeding evidence. Easy for, say, Wood Warbler, but I suppose technically drumming is then the equivalent - as I don't hear Peckers drumming outside the breeding season.
As an aside, I've heard wintering Wryneck on the Algarve do their call/song, so I guess we arrive at a point someone made earlier - they're not songbirds, so breeding evidence should be based on something else (creating nest hole, drumming, courtship etc for example) 🤔🤷

Maybe both should be used?

[Re MSW's drumming:]

Yes, but only exceptionally in the narrower courtship and brood cavity context

Lautäußerungen Spechte - www.ornitho.de

Green Woodpecker has a note to the same effect. Otherwise, both have a song used in breeding season context. It's also hard to hear a drumming Wryneck, and passerines sing songs in various states of crystallisation almost all year round.

 

[01101001]

(Apart from possible seasonal and territorial adjustments, the occurence of song -- on its own -- is merely a 'Possible', which is still a long distance from 'Probable' or 'Confirmed' (as per eBird's system, at least), and shouldn't be that much of a problem, plus drumming woodpeckers begin to defend their territories much before the eggs are laid anyway, so there is some inescapable vagueness in the model.)

EDIT: I report these and other things also because I want to continue using eBird as seamlessly as possible and hope it remains as accurate as possible as a source of reference. The previous stuff mentioned here is already solved, BTW.

EDIT 2: In xeno-canto, 35% of all foreground Middle Spotted Woodpecker recordings are songs. In Macaulay Library, the share is 8%. This is statictically significant and may be impacted by the way the species accounts are organised*, by which I mean that the song is marked in the same way as a regular call. No recordings are labelled as songs for Lesser Spotted Woodpecker or Black Woodpecker either, though other sources have analogous recordings that are called songs there.

This will probably skew breeding data for those woodpecker species once the announced maps based on breeding codes are rolled out, thus having an unwelcome knock-on effect on the quality of the signature eBird Science products. In a pessimistic scenario, this skewed data may then inform conservation priorities in countries such as the United Kingdom, in which the breeding population of Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is small anyway and, every breeding attempt is important (I believe).

*I and, probably, many other people look to eBird's species accounts for reference; the same issues occur with Merlin's species accounts.

 

[Butty]

eBird . . . hope it remains as accurate as possible as a source of reference

Thus we see one of the (many) problems/limitations of citizen science: different people (very possibly on a linguistic/cultural basis) applying the same term in different ways. There might even be people recording drumming as 'song', given that they are functionally identical.

 

[01101001]

Regarding breeding codes, yes, drumming and song are (I believe) treated equally; for recordings, there's another label, and it at least should be applied consistently so as to differentiate between the two.

When in doubt, I prefer to stick to Collins (I consult the 3rd English-language edition), though -- also, The Sound Approach, but it doesn't have info about every single species, plus assorted other sources.

Just to give the full picture: it's 35% (XC) to 8% (ML) for MSW; 19% to 9% (so, potentially, not that bad for UK conservation, maybe) for LSW; 18% to 6% for Black Woodpecker.

 

[Butty]

Just to give the full picture: it's 35% (XC) to 8% (ML) for MSW; 19% to 9% (so, potentially, not that bad for UK conservation, maybe) for LSW; 18% to 6% for Black Woodpecker.

I'm not at all clear where you're coming from - or going to - with these numbers (certainly I see no potential insights at all for 'conservation' or for population levels), but I really would counsel that you attach no significance to them whatsoever. All they suggest is that different citizen-science data-collectors are using the word 'song' in different and uncontrolled ways.

 

[01101001]

I hate to revive this thread after much unpleasant argumentation from my side, but BotWP appears to treat 'advertising call' and 'song' as synonyms:

• Wryneck has 'advertising call (song)' in the description and 'song' in the title of the recording,
• Green Woodpecker has 'advertising call' in the description,
• Middle Spotted Woodpecker has 'advertising call' in the description and 'song' in the title of the recording.

I still believe that the advertising call/song is (functionally) different from other calls.

 

[Butty]

BotWP appears to treat 'advertising call' and 'song' as synonyms

They are - effectively.

advertising call/song is (functionally) different from other calls

Correct.
Your two statements are entirely compatible.