Communication and Signalling in the Language of Birds

Scientific research has revealed that throughout the living world,
communication isjust as important as it is to human beings. Countless
living things lack the capacity for human speech, yet they employ
entirely differentmethods in order to communicate with each other—and
even with other species. Some of the most dramatic examples of this is
displayed by birds.
All forms of life on Earth have been created with miraculous
properties and astonishing abilities.The examination of just one
single species is enough to reveal hundreds of proofs of Allah's
magnificent creation.
In one verse of the Qur'an, Allah reveals that:
There is no creature crawling on the earth or flying creature, flying
onits wings, who are not communities just like yourselves—We have not
omitted anything from the Book—then they will be gathered to their
Lord. (Qur'an, 6: 38)
The birds to which this verse draws our attention notice are one of
the living communities that we need to examine and reflect upon.
There are roughly some 10,000 species of bird in the world, each of
whichpossesses its own miraculous features. Wherever you may live, you
can see a great number of these feathered creatures and can observe
different and extraordinary properties in each and every one. With
their attractive appearances, flawless flight mechanisms, expertise on
the routes and timingof migrations, ability to build nests and
altruistic behavior toward their young and to one another, birds
possess countless proofs of the fact of creation. Their ability to
communicate isanother of these.
Birds' Sense of Hearing
For birds to display their talents in communicating by sound, song—and
in the case of some birds, words— they require excellent hearing. At
critical times in their lives, their sense of hearing becomes
particularly important. Experiments have shownthat in order for birds
to learn the distinctive song of their own species, they need an
auditory feedback system. Thanks to this system, young birds learn to
compare the sounds they produce themselves with the patterns of a song
they have memorized. If they were deaf, it wouldn't normally be
possible for them to sing recognizable songs.
Birds' ears are well equipped for hearing, but they hear in a
different way from us. For them to recognize a tune, they have to hear
it in always the same octave (a series of seven notes), whereas we
humans can recognize a tune even if we hear it in a different octave.
Birds cannot, but can instead recognize timbre—a fundamental note
combined with harmonies. The ability torecognize timbre and harmonic
variations lets birds hear and reply to many diverse sounds, and
sometimes even reproduce them.
Birds can also hear shorter notes than we can. Humans process sounds
in bytes in about 1/20th of a second, whereas birds can distinguish
these soundsin 1/200th of a second. This means that birds aresuperior
at differentiating sounds that arrive in very rapid succession. In
other words, a bird's capacity to perceive sound is approximately ten
times greater than ours; and inevery note heard by a human, it can
hear ten. Moreover, some birds are also able to hear lower-frequency
sounds than we are. Their hearing sensitivity is so finely tuned that
they can even tell the difference between pieces by such famous
composers as Bach and Stravinsky.
Birds' extremely sensitive hearing functions perfectly. Clearly, each
of this sense's components is created by special system, for if any
one failed to work properly, the bird would not be able to hear any
sounds at all.
Bird Sounds Are Not Haphazard
Usually, birdsong is not composed of randomly produced sounds. Songs
are exceptionally diversemelodies of specific meaning, sung for a
purpose, and are much more complex than the calls used for signaling.
They are generally used by males to advertise and defend a territory,
or in courtship. It is also believed that songs serve a social
function. When a pair is building their nest, they also establish
communicationby song. Experiments on caged birds have also
demonstrated that birds find it easier to learn songs if another bird
is present, but out of sight,in another cage.
Male and female songbirds have differentbrain structures, particularly
in the regions related to soundproduction. With many songbird species,
the males can sing, but the females cannot. The males use "song" to
call their mates or designate a tree, pole, or electrical cable as a
place to perch.Each species sings a songwith its own characteristics,
but any given species' songs display variations according to age, sex,
particular time of year, and geographical location-appropriate for the
environment in which they live. For example, birds that live in
meadows use "songs of flight." Similarly, ones that live in the dense
foliage of rain forests or reed thickets have loud voices to
compensate forreduced visibility.