Bird songs got softer during lockdown

[Eldorado]

“It's like a cocktail party,” says Derryberry. “When it gets louder and louder in the room, you get louder and louder. Then when the party ends, you don't keep shouting all night.”

To find out if and how the sparrows’ songs had changed, Derryberry and her colleagues looked at two sets of recordings: the first, from the spring of 2015; the second, from the spring of this year after shelter-at-home mandates. The recordings were taken in the same places, included locations in urban San Francisco and surrounding rural areas of Marin county.

When Derryberry’s team compared the recordings, they discovered that in spring 2020 city sparrows made a dramatic shift to lower, quieter song, while in 2015 the songs stayed high and loud.

Full article at the Smithsonian mag: Link