Cowbirds fascinate cow-bird watchers-and-listeners for in many ways. This 2012 study focuses on some of those ways in some of those cowbirds:
“Effects of Habitat and Urbanization on the Active Space of Brown-Headed Cowbird Song,” Megan D. Gall, Kelly L. Ronald, Eric S. Bestrom, and Jeffrey R. Lucas, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 132, 2012, pp. 4053–4062. The authors report:
“The three parts of the brown-headed cowbird song are likely to be subject to different propagation constraints in open vs closed habitats and urban vs non-urban habitats. Therefore, we calculated the active space for (1) the entire brown-headed cowbird song, (2) the introductory phrase (P1 or glug glug), and (3) the final phrase (P2 or glee) in each of the four habitats.”
Here is a brief video of one cowbird singing its song:
