The birds and the bugs: questions flying around Reddit's 'Ask Science' community

Do you ever listen to birds singing catchy little melodies and wonder - wait a second, do they know music theory? Can they sing in thirds and fifths? Half steps and whole steps? Do they have perfect pitch?

In this episode of Endless Thread, co-hosts Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson fly into r/AskScience to explore the question of whether or not our feathered friends are, indeed, musical in the way we human animals think about the term.

And Ben turns to the subreddit for theories on why our windshields are no longer splattered with bugs.

Show Notes:

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This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Amory Sivertson: [Laughing.]

Ben Brock Johnson: What are you giggling about?

Amory: I don't know. We haven't even started, and I'm already, I’m just in a mood.

So I have an animal story for you today, Ben.

Ben: Love it.

Amory: Although I've really been thinking of it as more of a music story. Related to animals, perhaps.

Ben: Animals in music? I mean, might as well be…

Amory: I don’t want to give too much away, but it might be related.

Ben: Disney's Robin Hood. I'm ready. Let's sing some songs together.

Amory: Okay, so first I'm going to play you a little melody that I recorded on piano, and I want you to just tell me if you recognize it.

[PIANO MUSIC]

Ben: I don't recognize it, but my favorite part of it and the thing that reminds me of something is that dee-neeeh, like the little suspended weeer-neeer, neeer-neeer. I don't even know what that, the musical term for that - suspended fifth? I don't know what it is. And then it comes back to the tonic or whatever. And it reminds me of Weezer, I'm not sure why. But that's what I got.

Amory: So I sort of set you up for failure in terms of recognizing this specific, like being able to identify what this is, because this is a quote unquote original melody. And I say quote unquote, because I kind of stole it.

Ben: Did you steal it from a burb?

Amory: I did.

Ben: I knew you stole it from a burb.

Amory: I stole it from a bird. So here is the original source, and you're going to have to listen very, very closely because this was recorded on an older phone of mine.

[Birdsong phone recording]

Amory: Okay, so can you hear it in there?

Ben: Wow, it is pretty cranked.

Amory: I was standing next to the window when I recorded it.

Ben: What I hear in that birdsong is, I want to say it's like a bird that I recognize from dawn. That's like a dawn, a bird sound that comes in the morning.

Amory: Very good, yes.

Ben: And also, I'm going to say, I'm just going to guess that it's also like a springtime bird song. I mean, maybe all birdsong is springtime.

Amory: Although I will say, I mean, I won't give anything away at this point, but I will say like birds don't just have one call. They do have the classic call.

Ben: Yeah, they got bars. Birds got bars.

Amory: They've got repertoire. Yeah. So you're absolutely right. I recorded this on April 7th, 2017. So six years ago. And I just labeled it “pre-dawn birdsong” in my phone. It was one of those spring mornings where you don't really mind being woken up by the birds because you're like, “Thank God, the birds are back.”

Ben: You're like, the planet is alive again.

Amory: We're alive. Yeah. So I like got out of bed half awake, at like five in the morning, and I'm standing by the window recording this because through this kind of chaotic bird chatter, that melody, the “doo doo, doo doo, doo doo, doo doo” was coming through loud and clear in my brain, at least, in my half awake brain. So that may sound totally crazy, I get it. Like that's not what that bird was doing, but, okay.

But I recently found some affirmation that I'm not completely crazy from Reddit, or at least that I'm not alone in thinking about birdsong from a human musical perspective.

So there's this post in the askscience subreddit that was made about a year ago by a redditor who goes by u/ModernMartialArtist.

Ben: Cool.

Amory: The title of the post was Do birds sing in certain "keys" consisting of standardized "notes"? And then the body of the post reads, “For instance, do they use certain standards between frequencies, like how we have whole steps, which sounds like this:

[PIANO]

Amory: As opposed to a half step, which sounds like the Jaws theme sort of:

[PIANO]

Amory: Do they have fifths?

[PIANO]

Amory: The distance between the first note in a scale and the fifth note?

[PIANO]

Ben: I'm more of a thirds and sevenths man myself, so.

Amory: To each their own.

[PIANO]

Amory: They ask, do they use different tunings? If so, is there a standard for certain species with all the birds using the same? Are there dialects with different regions of the same species using different tunings and intervals? So like a flood of questions that this redditor has. Have you ever given this any thought yourself, Ben?

Ben: I guess I've thought a lot about birdsong and how, like, it feels to me, like we don't fully understand it and it feels more like a language. And then I've thought about how music is like a language. Yeah, I guess, I've like mused on it, but I haven't put any deep thought into it.

Amory: Yeah, well, you're spot on in saying that we're trying to understand it. And this was reflected in the top comment which comes from the Redditor u/kilotesla. They write, “this subject has long been of interest to ornithologists, musicians and musicologists. It's tricky to study because musical training can help you parse sounds in a detailed analytical way, but it can also lead to hearing it in a framework that could impose human musical structure beyond what is inherent in the actual bird song.” Which is a fancy way of saying like, this is exactly what I was doing when I heard that, you know, birdsong in bed and I get out of bed and I decide, Oh, this bird is singing this melody. And that bird is like, No, I'm not saying that melody. And I'm like, too bad you're singing in this melody because I'm imposing my own, like, musical framework onto it. They go on, “ethno musicologists attempt to do something similar when they study non-Western music, which can use different tunings and structural concepts.” So Western music, we typically use a 12 note scale that has, you know, 12 distinct scale degrees.

[PIANO]

Ben: Okay.

Amory: But, you know, in non-Western music and a lot of Eastern music, there are what's called microtones, which are between the 12 notes that we acknowledge.

[MUSIC]

Ben: Yeah.

Amory: So then they cite this master's thesis from 2020, as you do, by a guy named Peter McGarry at the University of Huddersfield in England.

Ben: Oh, P. McGarry. Love him.

Amory: Yeah. His thesis is called “The Musical Influences of Nature”. Very fitting. Which talks specifically about Béla Bartók.

Ben: Oh, love me. Some Bartók.

Amory: Yeah. We're going to listen to a little Bartók because he writes, “Béla Bartók was very much influenced by the birds of Northern America and features them in his Piano Concerto Number Three’. Writing to his son, he wrote, quote, “The birds have become completely drunk with the spring and are putting on concerts, the like of which I've never heard.”

[Youtube clip: Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3, BB 127, Sz.119 - II. Adagio religioso]

Ben: Oh, I love that. Let's just listen to that. Screw this podcast.

Amory: Sounds good.

Ben: It's so much more tense and dissonant. And there's the sort of, like, less dissonant bits are like, much more sort of passing than what you played for me. I know what you played was, like, much more simplistic, and you're not Béla Bartók, but yeah, that's my first impressions of Bela Bartók’s version of this.

Amory: Yeah, I mean, I think he is taking a more literal approach to, or literal is not the right word, but it's almost as if he tried to actually transcribe exactly what he was hearing. Whereas my approach is not, it was just -  I heard the birdsong, the melody that I heard cutting through was much more of a, you know, human melody than me trying to actually transcribe what I am hearing, note for note.

Ben: Mm hmm.

Amory: I want to mention one other thing that the top commenter references, which is a 2008 article in Transcultural Music Review that presents, quote, “a zoo…Oh, this is a hard word. Zoomusicological case study on how birdsong might be like the human animal's music.” This is from page 19, specifically, of that article says, quote, “Do pied butcherbirds possess absolute pitch”, also known as perfect pitch. So this person says, “by all accounts, yes, they do possess perfect pitch.” So I wanted to play a little pied butcherbird. These are from Australia and I just love them.

[Youtube clip: Amazing Singing Performance by Four Pied Butcherbirds, Western Australia]

Amory: You hear that little echo of a bird responding, like a call and response?

Ben: Yeah. Good pitch.

Amory: Right?

Ben: But are those birds within earshot of each other? Because that to me wouldn't feel like perfect pitch. That would feel like a bird being able to match pitch.

Amory: Right. So that's not actually - the call and response here is just fun. But that's not a demonstration of perfect pitch, because you're right, it is just a call and response. But it says one bird was recorded almost daily over a two and a half week period in 2002, producing five hours of recordings.

[Youtube clip: Pied Butcherbird Duet]

Ben: Oh, now we're getting to the perfect pitch piece.

Amory: Yeah. So two phrases with notes of almost constant frequency were chosen for every take. And the frequency at the beginning and ending of a song and at several midway points was measured. Results indicated a virtually imperceptible variation among renditions of the same phrase by the same individual. They also apparently have relative pitch, which means that they can transpose, you know, if they're like, I don't feel like singing bah bah bah, I want to be like bah bah bah, they can do that too.

But really back to your first comment about how we are still learning more about this -

Ben: Yeah.

Amory: Two of my other favorite comments in this thread - ne was by u/HappybytheSea - they said, “the BirdNET app from Cornell is brilliant. It not only accurately identifies all the birds in my garden, but while recording them it produces a visual amplitude map so you can see the patterns of different species.”

Ben: There's another one called Merlin, I think.

Amory: Yes. So another commenter, u/TheIBWOLives, I don't know what that means. They say, “if you want to help scientists figure out the answers to questions like these, download the app Merlin Bird I.D. If volunteers from all over submit audio of, say, a white throated sparrow…”

[Sound clip: White-throated Sparrow]

Amory: “...Then scientists can compare the audio and track changes in vocalizations across time and space.” So this is like an ongoing question. It's a crowdsource effort. Maybe get a bird app and start recording some birds in your hood and upload it so that we can actually learn more about how they communicate with each other and whether they do sing in certain keys or not, because we only think we know the answer right now, but we're just scratching the surface here.

Ben: What a lovely story.

Amory: Oh, speaking of the answer, by the way…

Ben: Oh, yeah.

Amory: I almost forgot. So I was digging around, before I knew about these apps, I was already digging around to try to figure out what this was, what the bird in my little song might be. I thought at first that it was the gray catbird.

[Sound clip: Gray Catbird]

Amory: That was from the Mass Audubon Library of Bird Sounds. But then a couple of weeks ago, Ben, I got home at about 5:30 in the morning from dropping someone off at the airport for a very early flight.

Ben: Sounds like a good time.

Amory: Great time. But when I got home, I heard what I thought was the same birdsong. So again, I hit record. Only this time I could see the bird doing the singing.

[Phone recording of Robin]

Amory: And this, Ben, is a robin. It's just a robin.

Ben: Oh, I love a robin.

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. All right, Robin.

Amory: Now that I have these bird apps, I can actually record in the apps and will attempt to do so. But in the meantime, I think I have both solved the mystery of the bird behind my birdsong. And I've learned about ways that we can all learn more about birdsong. And I think that's pretty neat.

Ben: That is really neat. And I have a relevant shot chaser story for you.

Amory: Oh, yeah I'm ready.

Ben: Okay. We'll be right back.

[SPONSOR BREAK]

Ben: Amory.

Amory: Ben.

Ben: How do you feel about locusts?

Amory: Love a locust.

Ben: You love a locust?

Amory: No. I can't say I've ever given a single thought to locusts in my life.

Ben: What about aphids?

Amory: Is that just another type of, uh, bug?

Ben: Yeah. What about grasshoppies?

Amory: Oh, I love a grasshopper. They're a little surprising. They're a little unpredictable. But that’s part of what makes them fun.

Ben: What about the bees?

Amory: You know, we need them. They make me nervous, but we need them.

Ben: Yeah.

Amory: So, I’d defend a bee.

Ben: You’d defend a bee?

Amory: Uh huh.

Ben: How would you defend a bee?

Amory: With my bare hands.

Ben: Mmmmm….

Amory: Wrong answer?

Ben: That’s not going to work very well.

Amory: No?

Ben: No, not against what's coming for the bees.

Amory: Oh, no.

Ben: All right. You ready for another r/askscience question and answer?

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: Posted by u/ThoughtlessUphill. What happened to all the bugs that used to splatter on the windshield years ago?

Amory: Did they go anywhere?

Ben: The only answer, the body of this post, just says “Edit: Well now I’m depressed.”

Amory: Uh-oh.

Ben: The top comment on this post is, weirdly enough, from a user named u/Outliver.

Amory: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben: And it says, “a study mostly executed in Canada and Germany has shown a global decline of 75% over the past 27 years. Locally, up to 90%. Not necessarily in biodiversity, but in the overall biomass of insect populations. Here's the link.” And they link to the study. The study was mostly done in protected areas, apparently, to get a better idea of the overall population. And apparently, there's also a documentary about this.

And then another person jumps in with the username, u/Radi0ActivSquid. And they say, “another study I saw and kept bookmarked, was that with rising CO2 levels, grasses are bulking up but lack the calories herbivorous insects need to stay alive. Grasshoppers have been found to eat and eat and eat and can't get enough nutrition from the plants. This study was also done in preserved areas far from human interference.”

Amory: Oh, no.

Ben: Hmm. Okay. And so there's a link to that study.

Amory: Okay.

Ben: The next comment is from the first username that doesn't make sense for this topic, or make vague sense for this topic. Doesn't seem to be animal based. U/Bbrhuft, that user says, “also, insects don't have lungs. They absorb air passively.” Did you know that?

Amory: Nope.

Ben: I did not know that.

Amory: Did not.

Ben: “I wonder if they are especially sensitive to elevated CO2 levels,” this person ponders. Seems to be confirmed by this study.” And they say there needs to be more research on this. So they link to another study.

And this is pretty scary, I think, because when you think about all the things, you know, insects are at the bottom of the food chain, right? Or they're pretty low, right? And when you think about frogs, when you think about birds, when you think about the animals that eat the frogs and birds, when you think about the animals, you know what I mean?

Amory: Oh yeah.

Ben: If you just think about this, insects are a pretty crucial part of our environment, I think. And it is scary to think about, especially in springtime, right? When you think about that book, Silent Spring, when you think about, you know, that beautiful birdsong that really, you know, won't happen without, you know, a whole mess of insects. And you think about the insect population dying off. I mean, we used to just hit them with our windshields, but it sounds like more serious things are happening to these bugs.

Amory: Well, is there anything being done? Is there anything we can do to get the grasshoppers their nutrition?

Ben: You got the perfect question at the right time. And now I'm wondering if you are indeed user u/xXSpeedDemonXx.

Amory: I'll never tell.

Ben: Triple x speed demon. Because this user, a.k.a Amory Sivertson wrote, “what can an individual do to help insect biodiversity, specifically, not just recycling and normal climate awareness and action, but specifically for the bugs?”

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: So, the answer is not defending them, necessarily, with your hands, not defending the bees with your bare hands, necessarily. Unless you count using your bare hands as creating habitats, says u/JennaSais. “If you have a lawn, put flower beds instead, particularly ones filled with local wildflowers. Emphasis on local. Don't just order any old seed packet as they may contain seeds of species that are invasive to your area.” Well, I mean, they should listen to our episode about invasives, Worm Wars. “Look for a local organization whose mandate is to encourage biodiversity. They should have something. If you don't have a lawn, get involved in your community making unused spaces into garden space. Heck, even some planters on a balcony can help if you're on a lower floor.”

Amory: Hmm.

Ben: So the answer is plant some, plant some wild things.

Amory: Yeah, I did try that one. I think it was like the first summer that we lived in our current spot, and I planted wildflowers. I admit, I don't know if they were local wildflowers or not. You'd have to ask the local hardware store. But I scattered all of these wildflower seeds, and I got one wildflower. I got this one orange flower that popped up. I'd like to think that made a tiny, tiny difference. But I am motivated to try again after hearing this.

Ben: Yeah. Plant flowers and, you know, plants that attract a variety of bugs. I have enjoyed planting things. And actually, you can create these little things, you can put these things in your garden that actually serve as like, as sort of like highchair pedestals for dragonflies. Have you ever done that?

Amory: No. What does a dragonfly high chair pedestal look like, Ben?

Ben: It’s just like a tiny, tall thing that stands up in your garden. And if you plant things for pollinators…

Amory: How tall?

Ben: Well, it depends, but, you know, tall enough that, like, it can comfortably alight on it and still be high up in your garden.

Amory: Okay.

Ben: And if you do that, then you will attract, potentially attract dragonflies and dragonflies eat those mosquitoes, if you know what I mean. So get some dragonflies in your garden. And I'm not saying all insect death is bad, you know what I'm saying?

Amory: Yeah. Mosquitoes can go straight to hell.

Ben: It's springtime, folks. Get out there, get some wildflowers, toss them around like Johnny Appleseed. Get out there.

Amory: Do it for the bugs.

Ben: Yeah, do it for the bugs. That's our message to y’all, folks. Do it for the bugs.

Amory: And the birds.

Ben: And the birds.

Amory: And the bees.

Ben: And the bees.

Amory: Which is a bug, I think.

Ben: Alright folks, that’s it from us this week.

This episode was produced by yours truly, Amory Sivertson, and our podcast homie Nora Saks.

Maybe a dangerous proposition when you’re talking about the birds and the bees, but you know what we’d love to see pictures of? Your garden. Yes, your garden. Send us pictures of your garden at endless thread at wbur.org

Or you can post them to our subreddit. PM us your starts, girl, as they say.

This episode was sound designed by Emily Jankowski.

Talk to you soon.