The Invisible World of Birdsong: Too Fast for Humans to See or Hear

Take a journey into the hidden world of bird communication, as Dr. Samantha Carouso Peck discusses her Cornell University research on how and why birds sing, dance, and speak. She will explore the ways in which birdsong resembles human song and speech, and how birds learn to sing by shaping up their tunes, using feedback from parents and peers that is imperceptible to the human eye. Dr. Peck will discuss the incredible vocal flexibility of songbirds, parrots, and other mimics that incorporate human sounds into their repertories, and how birds pass down songs through the generations. She will also take a ‘bird’s eye view’ of how birds perceive time, sound, and motion differently from us, and how this affects their learning of song and dance, from acoustic acrobatics to backflips to tapdancing.

Dr. Samantha Carouso Peck is an expert in bird communication and cognition, having lived on six different continents in search of interesting birds. She has studied tool use in crows, speech in African Grey Parrots, and vocal learning and development in songbirds. After focusing on Animal Behavior and Communication during her undergraduate studies at Williams College, her doctoral dissertation at Cornell University focused on how young birds use feedback from their parents and peers, in forms invisible to the human eye, to guide their song learning. Her work has been published in Current Biology, Philosophical Transactions, Animal Behaviour, and Scientific American. She is currently the Head Ornithologist and Educator of the Grassland Bird Trust, a non-profit conservation organization in Fort Edwards, New York.

This event is co-sponsored by SAAS and the Glens Falls-Saratoga Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club.