How do birds learn how to sing?

Birds learn to sing the same way humans learn to talk: listening to those around you and then imitating.

If you rather learn about this in video form here is a great source:

https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-birds-learn-to-sing-partha-mitra

We have broken down how birds learn their song into phases, first is the:

Sensory learning phase- this is when a bird is first starting to hear, it hears a song nearby and commits it to memory (the learning pathway in the bird’s brain responds stronger to birds of the same species so it won’t learn just any song). Then comes the:

Sensorimotor (Motor) phase- This is when the bird starts to vocalize and practices singing the song that it has heard. At first, it sings what is called a subsong which sounds different than the learned song but has similar elements. It is pretty much the same as a baby babbling. The song slowly starts to become more and more like the learned song. Once finished their song is called a crystallized song.

In case you were wondering, if the bird never hears a song from their species what will they sing? They will form what is called an innate song. Innate songs are different than cultural songs. Cultural songs of a species will slightly differ based on region and generation.

Sources:

https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-birds-learn-to-sing-partha-mitra

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-development-of-birdsong-16133266/

Dr. Reichard Professor of Zoology at Ohio Wesleyan University

Photo by Andy Holmes on Unsplash