Wildlife Discoveries: Interpreting neighborhood wildlife communications

Wildlife Discoveries
Published Saturday, October 30, 2004

Last week a friend asked why bluejays were making a racket in her neighborhood. "They seem to fly in groups from place to place screaming in chorus. My husband calls them the neighborhood gossips." Not far from the truth.

Each wild animal has its own levels of communication. Most songbirds have the following basics in their repertoire: territorial declarations; courtship and nesting calls; warning and immediate danger calls; fussing calls; feeding calls; and a myriad of soft contact calls when a family keeps in touch.

Bluejays are master communicators and the more you listen the better you get at interpretation. When a group of bluejays begins jeering in chorus, they are mobbing some kind of predator -- a snake, an owl, a hawk, a cat, a crow (notorious nest robbers). By making a racket they inform the whole neighborhood of the location of danger. A single sharp JEER! from one jay means no nonsense, immediate danger. Amazingly, every bird and squirrel in the vicinity will go silent or freeze.

Jays are also natural mimics, often imitating red-shouldered hawk calls, even fooling other birds into fleeing from a feeder so the jay can take a few bites in solitary peace. The softer side of jays is revealed when the female is on a nest and the male brings food to her. They exchange soft mutterings and twitters when they don't want to attract attention to the nest.

Anyone who's had Carolina wrens in the yard becomes aware they have a large vocabulary and communicate constantly -- from the loud peachata, peachata, peachata of territorial declarations to the soft, almost constant birrrip, birrrip of the male and female as they explore nesting and feeding sites. These contact sounds increase when chicks fledge and disperse into shrubs around your yard. It's their way of keeping track of who is where. Wren chicks nag parents into bringing food to them by uttering feeding cries. Parents gradually refuse to come on demand and encourage chicks to share in searching for food.

A number of squirrels giving alarm barks accompanied by vigorous tail flicking sets off a chain reaction among other squirrels, jays, mockingbirds and cardinals up to several blocks away.

Most of us are unaware wild animals understand each other. Communication between species happens all the time. In understanding other calls, wild animals increase their chances of survival.

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