Listen to Her Sing

Only male birds sing, right? Wrong! In fact, this widespread notion has a lot more to do with human cultural and geographic biases than it has to do with nature. In this talk, Nathan Pieplow explores the often-overlooked songs of female birds. You will hear the pair duets of meadowlarks and blackbirds, the musical songs of female cardinals and orioles and the distinctive song of the female Canyon Wren, among others. In which species do females actually sing more often than males? How do you know when you’re listening to a female Blue Jay? And where did we even get this crazy idea that only male birds sing? Answers to these questions and more in this presentation.

Nathan Pieplow is the author of the Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds, published in two volumes, one for Eastern and one for Western North America. An avid bird sound recordist and videographer, he is the author of the bird sound blog Earbirding.com, a board member of the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, an author of the Colorado Birding Trail, and former editor of the journal Colorado Birds. He teaches writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

This program is free and open to the public.

Join us for the online general meeting of the Whidbey Audubon Society at 7:00 pm, featuring a program beginning at 7:30. Pieplow will present remotely on Zoom, therefore the meeting and the program are virtual. Register below to receive the Zoom link.