Coronavirus bird songs, sparrows could sing more softly and sweetly

 Coronavirus bird songs, sparrows could sing more softly and sweetly.

Early in the pandemic in March and April (or what feels like 10 years ago), there were reports around the world of animals moving into previously busy cityscapes, and a rising chorus of bird calls.

And while many people reported increased sightings of coyotes, mountain lions and other animals, the reason may simply have been that we were all stuck at home and thus paying more attention to our surroundings. While it is possible that nearby wildlife, normally turned off by our noise, were now wandering into the territory of their human neighbors, the reports were mostly anecdotal. It’s hard to tell whether these were actually changes in animal behavior versus changes in our perspective.

In San Francisco, birders pondered a similar question. “We received many anecdotal accounts of birdsong being more noticeable,” Pam Young, executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society, told Popular Science in an email. But the question remained: was that just because traffic noise was down and people were paying more attention? Or were the birds actually changing their tunes?

Now, a new study in Science finds that at least one bird—a common sparrow—did indeed shift its sounds rapidly as San Francisco’s usual bustle became a whisper in April.

Elizabeth Derryberry, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tennessee, was looking at photos of the suddenly-empty city when she realized she had the opportunity for an unprecedented experiment.

In 2016, she and colleagues had recorded the calls of white-crowned sparrows in the San Francisco Bay Area. They measured the background noise in sparrows' territories and as well the characteristics of their calls—the highs and lows, and how loud they were. In the city, where the songbirds have to compete with cars, barking dogs, and construction, their calls were louder and more shrill. Their lowest notes were also higher compared to country birds in nearby Marin County because they needed to be heard above the low rumble of traffic.

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