The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

by Jennifer Ackerman

lekking males perch on a special slender twig and vigorously defend their territories by singing while wagging their little white-tipped tails. Most males occupy their singing perches and territories for less than a year, though a few lucky ones may persist as long as seven years. If you’re a young male, it’s hard to win your own territory. Young males seeking to join a lek use their gifts of imitation to impersonate existing territory holders. “First, they’ll sit out on the edges of the lek listening,” explains Kapoor. “Then they’ll sneak around and eavesdrop on different individuals, focusing in on one local bird—let’s call him ‘Fred’—listening to him and learning his song. Then they’ll go off into the forest and practice by themselves. They sound horrible at first, squeaking away, and for the first couple of weeks, you can’t identify what they’re trying to copy.” But the young birds practice and practice, and over the course of a few weeks, they get much better. “By the time a young male is ready to come back and take his place on the lek,” says Kapoor, “he sounds exactly like Fred—or at least, one of his close neighbors—so I know exactly where in the lek he’s intending to go.” And here’s the creepy part: Kapoor suspects that a newcomer “mimic male” may attempt to usurp an established male’s territory by attacking and killing him and then taking his place—if he himself is not killed in the process.