Harry Hann Endowed Lecture: The Secret Singing Lives of Chickadees

This is part of our 2011 Summer Lecture Series

2011 HARRY HANN ALL-CAMP LECTURE. Black-capped chickadees sing one of the most well-known bird songs in North America: the two note "fee-bee." University of Windsor Associate Professor Dan Mennill’s will discuss the ways that chickadees use this deceptively simple song to achieve remarkably complex forms of communication. Using a decade of field studies on wild chickadees, Mennill will show that male chickadees use songs to defend their territories against rival males, and simultaneously use songs to attract female breeding partners. He will also demonstrate that hidden within the musical songs of chickadees is a secret world of competitive males and eavesdropping females.