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Showing posts from May, 2019

The imitation game

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The concept of mimicry within the vocabulary of certain birds is something that is ingrained within most human beings from a very young age. We've all grown up with talking parrots on film and TV, at least, and, beyond that, those who watch wildlife documentaries will know of a few others, especially the rightly famous footage of a Superb Lyrebird captured by BBC cameras some years ago. In terms of more 'local' birds for those of us living in Europe, those among us who become birders quickly become familiar with a few breeding birds which are quite adept at copying sounds. Common Starlings, for one thing, regularly include mimicry within their otherwise disjointed songs: given that mynas are starlings, this is hardly too surprising. Marsh Warbler, also, is famous for its mimicry, to the extent that, in areas where this species is scarce to rare and Reed Warblers are common, any mimetic unstreaked Acrocephalus  will attract attention. And Marsh Warblers are extremely mim