birdsong. with only 300 left in the wild, the striking regent honeyeater and its song are disappearing from their native south australia. researchers had set outjust to find and monitor the remaining birds when they noticed that some honeyeaters no longer sang the right tune. songbirds around the world, like these familiar uk species, learn to sing in much the same way as humans learn to speak, listening to and copying others of their species. what we re finding is the population is now so small and so sparsely distributed that some young males are actually unable to find other males of regent honeyeater to kind of learn their songs from. and so they are ending up just learning the songs of other species that they hear in the landscape.
a species of bird in australia has become so endangered it s forgetting how to sing its own song. there are only about 300 regent honeyeaters left in the wild and because they rarely hear each other, some have started imitating the songs of other species. so researchers are now playing recordings to birds being bred in captivity as victoria gill explains. birdsong. with only 300 left in the wild, the striking regent honeyeater and its song are disappearing from their native south australia. researchers had set outjust to find and monitor the remaining birds when they noticed that some honeyeaters no longer sang the right tune. songbirds around the world, like these familiar uk species, learn to sing in much
birdsong. with only 300 left in the wild, the striking regent honeyeater and its song are disappearing from their native south australia. researchers had set outjust to find and monitor the remaining birds when they noticed that some honeyeaters no longer sang the right tune. songbirds around the world, like these familiar uk species, learn to sing in much the same way as humans learn to speak, listening to and copying others of their species. what we re finding is the population is now so small and so sparsely distributed that some young males are actually unable to find other males of regent honeyeater to kind of learn their songs from. and so they are ending up just learning the songs of other species they hear in the landscape. with so much of their forest habitat destroyed to make way for agriculture, researchers say that about 12% of regent honeyeaters have now completely lost their natural song.