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Cyanerpes, I (41)

February 9, 1958
Barro Colorado

Watching the aviary early this morning. Both the captive juveniles have been very vocal indeed. HCN's, Wh Notes, and WS. All given by birds sitting more or less by themselves, in a more or less relaxed posture (sometimes a slight trace of blue fluff), with CR, but no other ritualized patterns). There is no doubt but that all 3 calls are closely related; i.e. the Wh Notes seem to intergrade with both the others. I was particularly surprised at the frequency of Wh N's this morning by birds which were not engaged in overt fighting. They gave their Wh N's in definite, apparently organized, series of 3 or (less frequently) 4 notes. Sometimes definite series [[comme ca]]: [[hand-drawn pitches]] All these Wh N's were accompanied by definite opening & closing of the bill with each note; and this seems to be one of the best distinctions (in the case of dubious utterances) between the Wh N's and WS. None of these calls indicted any obvious response by other birds (both the juveniles have had [[?]] attacks made by adults upon them, but such attacks did not seem to be definitely correlated with calls by the young birds).

Some of the series of Wh N's of the younger juvenile are even longer than those described above. Including at least six notes.

Some of these also done with little or no CR.

I wonder why the adult male isn't being nearly so vocal? Is it because he is already "mated"???