Response of Male Mountain Chickadees, Poecile gambeli, to Playback of Different Song Types

Abstract

Individual male Mountain Chickadees (Poecile gambeli) have repertoires of 4-7 song types that vary in number and pitch of notes. Males sing different song types in different situations, suggesting that song types carry different behavioral messages. Using playback experiments conducted in the field, we measured the responses of male Mountain Chickadees to song types that differed in number and pitch of notes. Males responded similarly to playback of both common 3-note songs and common 2-note songs, so it is unclear whether these song types carry different messages. Males were more likely to approach the speaker during playback of descending 3-note songs (where each successive note is of lower pitch) than during playback of common 3-note songs (with the last two notes of the same pitch but lower-pitched than the first note). This supports our previous finding that these 3-note song types carry messages indicating different levels of aggression.