[and male/female relations, apropos the birdsong and ethology threads]
June 20 2008 Financial Times
Birds' nests are going for a song By Alan Cane
It's just another snatch of birdsong to humans, but to avian home-makers it's as convincing a residential description as any estate agent's pitch. Scientists have discovered that some migratory songbirds settle on where to set up home by listening to the singing of others that have successfully raised a family in a particular habitat.
So powerful is the message, they have found, that recordings of birdsong can persuade migrants to settle in unsuitable places.
Matthew Betts of Oregon State University (OSU), who led the research into the behaviour of the black-throated blue warbler in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the US, said that finding the right habitat in which to breed was a matter of life and death to most birds: "They don't live a long time and they need to get it right first time," he said.
The OSU research contradicts conventional wisdom, which holds that vegetation is the most important factor for birds selecting breeding grounds. Prof Betts and his team found that male birds were four times more likely to follow the cues provided by song than their own observations of the physical environment and that the females, "too trusting for their own good", followed them despite their having made a poor choice.