Many people assume only male birds do the singing. But females also sing in at least 660 species and perhaps many more.

许多人认为只有雄鸟才会唱歌。但实际上，至少有660种甚至更多的雌鸟也会唱歌。

撰文/播音 莎拉·威特曼（Sarah Witman）

翻译 许楠

审校 郭晓

That’s a female Northern Cardinal. And here’s a female Venezuelan Troupial.  

（鸟鸣声）这是雌性北美红雀。这是雌性委内瑞拉拟鹂。（鸟鸣声）

Many people assume that male songbirds are the ones doing the crooning. But more than 660 species of songbirds are known in which the females sing as well. And there are still 3,500 species of songbird in which the female singing status is unknown. Which implies that there could be plenty more female singers to be found.

许多人认为只有雄鸟才会歌唱。但是我们已经知道至少有660种雌性鸣禽也会唱歌。另外还有3,500种鸣鸟，目前尚不知晓它们的雌鸟是否唱歌。这意味着，还有更多的雌性鸣鸟会被发现。

“We often talk to people, both people who are scientists and ornithologists but also people who are birders and citizen scientists, who say, ‘Yeah you know, I have this story where a female was clearly singing.’” Biologist Lauryn Benedict, of the University of Northern Colorado.

“我们经常与人交流，其中既有科学家、鸟类学家，也有观鸟者和大众科学家，他们会说：‘是啊，我知道这个事，雌鸟确实会唱歌。’”北科罗拉多大学的生物学家劳琳·本尼迪克特（Lauryn Benedict）说。

These field reports inspired Benedict and Cornell behavioral ecologist Karan Odom to start the Female Bird Song Project with a group of colleagues in 2017. The goal is to get professional researchers and citizen scientists alike to submit recordings and field notes of birdsong from both males and females.

这些实地报道促使本尼迪克特和康奈尔大学行为生态学家卡伦·奥多姆（Karan Odom）在2017年与同事一起开展了“雌鸟之歌”项目。目的是让专业研究人员和大众科学家们可以提交雄性和雌性鸟类的鸟鸣录音和现场记录。

LB: “And we're hoping to really give them ways to report that and document it so that we can aggregate that information in useful ways.”

LB：“我们希望能给他们提供一些报告和记录这些信息的渠道，这样我们就能采取有效的方式汇总这些信息。”

On the project’s website, FemaleBirdSong.org, you can hear various birds of both sexes—and complex duets sung by pairs of songbirds, like these Black Bellied Wrens.

Now Benedict and Odom are asking scientists to consider the existence of female birdsong in their research, even when it’s not their primary focus—for example, from studying avian neurobiology to collecting population data for bird conservation. They wrote up their goals in the journal The Auk: Ornithological Advances. [Karan J. Odom and Lauryn Benedict, A call to document female bird songs: Applications for diverse fields]

在这个项目的官网上，你可以听到各种各样的鸟叫声，雌雄都有，还有诸如黑腹鹪鹩这样的鸣鸟伴侣一起表演复杂的二重唱。<鸟鸣声>

现在，本尼迪克特和奥多姆希望科学家在研究中将雌鸟考虑进来，尽管这不是他们的主要关注点——例如，从鸟类神经生物学研究到以保护鸟类为目的的种群数据采集。他们的研究目标发表在《大海雀:鸟类学的进步》杂志上（The Auk: Ornithological Advances）[Karan J. Odom and Lauryn Benedict, A call to document female bird songs: Applications for diverse fields]。

Studying female birdsong is no simple task. Here’s Karan Odom: “So the biggest thing is to see the bird, which is number one not trivial. And number two, in the past since birdsong has been thought of as a male trait, it might not be that researchers were always verifying the sex of the bird by finding it and looking at it. So we're asking people to please be aware that females sing and to actually get a look at the bird that you're recording.”

研究雌鸟叫声的工作并不轻松。卡伦·奥多姆说：“所以最重要的事情是眼见为实，这是第一重要的事而非微不足道的。第二重要的事是要让人们注意到雌鸟的鸣声，并在录音时观察它们。因为过去鸟鸣被认为是一种雄性特征，研究人员可能并不总能通过发现并观察鸟来验证鸟的性别。

These researchers hope that more awareness of female song will lead to better-informed studies that can tell us when and why female birds are singing. And perhaps reveal aspects of avian life that no one has yet considered.

研究员希望对雌鸟鸣声有更多了解，以更好地解读雌鸟唱歌的时间和原因。或许还会发现鸟类生活未曾揭晓的部分。