City Great Tits sing higher notes than country birds. Photo: Steve Young (www.birdsonfilm.com)

Researchers listened to the songs of Great Tits from both urban and rural birds, recorded at 20 sites across Britain.  Clear differences were found between the songs from both areas, with birds from cities having noticeably higher songs which are more easily heard above the low-frequency background noises.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also demonstrated that these differences are also detected by male territory holders, whose responses differ depending on which song they hear. When city birds heard songs form other city birds they responded by singing or reacting to the song. When they heard songs from rural birds they showed no reaction. Country birds responded to city songs in the same way.

This shows that there is a clear divergence between songs from noisy and quiet areas, which results in a behavioural difference between urban and rural populations. The study looked only at male birds and what affect the song differences has on females from either area who are looking for partners is not known.

Listen to:

• Urban Great Tit song  
• Rural Great Tit song