If you saw the “00s pigeon sound” trend on TikTok a while ago, you’ll know some ’90s and ’00s babies think the call was much more common in their youth than it is now.
We think that could be down to a sort of pigeon baby boom that happened when they were little ― it’s evened out since, but the cooing of newly-dense flocks could have stood out more when they were small.
That’s great to know, but then there’s the bigger question; why do birds sing at all, and why do they especially love to do it in the morning?
After all, while most of us live far away from a rare bittern (the UK’s loudest bird, whose population is experiencing a much-needed boost), many of us have had our sleep disturbed by an expressive pigeon or ardent wren.
Writing about the so-called “dawn chorus,” the Woodland Trust shared that it’s mostly male birds who sing in the AM.
That’s because it’s no mean feat ― “Making so much noise uses up a lot of energy, especially on an empty stomach and after a chilly night, so only the strongest, best-fed males will produce the loudest songs,” they shared.
That might make female birds see them as a better prospect for mating ― the stronger the song, the fitter the bird ― and it might make rival male birds scamper.
As for why it happens in the morning, it’s simply an opportunity issue, The Woodland Trust says.
The predators are all asleep; it’s too dark to look for food, and insects might be inactive; and crucially, sound carries more in the morning because there’s not as much interference from other activity.
And while some people thought male birds perform better first thing, a Duke University study found “They’re able to perform more difficult songs later in the morning.”
Warming up seemed to help, the researchers found.
Stephen Nowicki, one of the co-authors of the Duke paper, said of the early-morning songs, “It’s like they’re warming up backstage, before the sun comes up and the curtain rises.”
A Los Angeles resident reached out to a zoologist about the same issue ― in their area, loud mockingbirds “torture” residents with very early wake-up calls.
John McCormack, director of the Moore Lab of Zoology at Occidental College, had bad news ― aside from wearing earplugs and shutting your windows, the best advice is to wait until their mating season is over.
Here in the UK, the advice is much the same.
But hey ― at least you’ll know the bird screeching its tiny lungs out in the wee hours is healthy, right?
