Song diversity hints at thrushes’ evolutionary past

The Hermit Thrush is famous for its melodiously undulating song, but we know very little about whether—and if so, how—its songs vary across the large swath of North America that it calls home in the summer. A new study from The Auk: Ornithological Advances provides the first thorough overview of geographic variation in Hermit Thrush song structure and hints at how isolation and adaptation shape differences in the tunes of a learned song within a species.