Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Home
Today's Show: The Alula
A Peregrine Falcon perched on a branch in the sunshine, holding its wings up, its tail fanned out
Listen In
  • Today's Show
  • Listen
    • Daily Shows
    • Threatened
    • Grouse
    • BirdNote Presents
    • How to Listen
  • Explore
    • Field Notes
    • Sights & Sounds
    • Birdwatching
    • Resources for Educators
  • How to Help Birds
    • At Home
    • In Your Community
    • Success Stories
  • About
    • The BirdNote Story
    • The Team
    • Partners
    • For Radio Stations
    • Funding
    • Contact Us
    • FAQs
    • Support BirdNote
  • Donate

How Birds Produce Sound

Why are some birds' sounds so different from others?
Subscribe to the Podcast
Download
  • Share This:
  • Share to Facebook
  • Share to Twitter
  • Share to Email
Singing Song Sparrow
© Mike Hamilton

Nearly all birds produce sound through an organ unique to birds, the syrinx. In many songbirds, the syrinx is not much bigger than a raindrop. Extremely efficient, it uses nearly all the air that passes through it. By contrast, a human creates sound using only 2% of the air exhaled through the larynx. Birds whose syrinx is controlled by only one set of muscles have a limited vocal range. This Song Sparrow, using several pairs, can put forth a cascade of trills and notes.

  • Full Transcript
  • Credits

BirdNote®

How Birds Produce Sound

 

Written by Chris Peterson

This is BirdNote!
[Call of the Brandt’s Cormorant; Song of the Northern Cardinal; Song of the Song Sparrow]
You just heard the grunt of a cormorant, the whistle of a cardinal, and the song of a Song Sparrow. Nearly all birds produce sound through an organ unique to birds, the syrinx. [Song of cardinal]
The syrinx is a set of muscles and membranes located where the two branches of the bronchial tubes converge to become the trachea. An adjacent air-sac helps build pressure in the syrinx. In many songbirds, this whole song-producing apparatus is not much bigger than a raindrop. The syrinx is extremely efficient at creating sound, using nearly all of the air that passes through it.
Let’s listen again to the limited vocal range of the cormorant, whose syrinx is controlled by only one set of muscles [Call of the cormorant]. The cardinal creates its pure whistle by producing sound in its left and right bronchial tubes simultaneously [Song of cardinal] The Song Sparrow, like many other songbirds, has five to seven pairs of muscles that govern the syrinx. It puts forth a cascade of trills and notes, as if singing a duet with itself [song of the Song Sparrow].
 I’m Michael Stein.
###
Bird sounds provided by the Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Brandt’s Cormorant recorded by G.F. Budney; Northern Cardinal recorded by G.A. Keller; Song Sparrow recorded by G.A. Keller.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2014 Tune In to Nature.org     April 2014 / 2021     Narrator:  Michael Stein

ID# orig: 041105soundKPLU       sound-01b

Chris Peterson
Writer
Michael Stein
Narrator
Mike Hamilton
Photographer
Support More Shows Like This
Tagsscience vocalization

Related Resources

More about Song Sparrows at All About BirdsSign up for the BirdNote podcast.

More About These Birds

Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)

Melospiza melodia

Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)

Cardinalis cardinalis

Sights & Sounds

Related Field Notes

March 1, 2020

Nature's Goggles - Nictitating Membranes

By BirdNote Gallery
December 18, 2017

What does it take to record the world’s birds?

By Gerrit Vyn

Birds connect us with the joy and wonder of nature. By telling vivid, sound-rich stories about birds and the challenges they face, BirdNote inspires listeners to care about the natural world – and take steps to protect it.

Support BirdNote

  • Daily Shows
  • Field Notes
  • BirdNote Presents
  • Sights & Sounds
  • About BirdNote
  • Contact BirdNote
Sign up for our newsletter!
  • BirdNote on Facebook
  • BirdNote on Twitter
  • BirdNote on Instagram

Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.

  • Privacy Policy