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6

Pezopetes, Oct. 4,1960, III  

kinds, followed by a twittering phrase, followed by a flourish. Perhaps the following may give some idea of a typical performance.

[[image]] 
"Tsawah-Tsawah Trit-Trit Tsa-a-wa-ah Tsa-a-wah Tsewee"

In this case, the first doublet consisted of quite typical SN's, like the SN's in "greetings". The second doublet appeared to consist of abbreviated MW's. The subsequent twittering part seemed to consist of more or less modified SN's. This was the most variable part of the "songs". Sometimes much longer than shown in the diagram. The terminal flourish may be related to the LW's.

Sometimes parts of this song were repeated, in an apparently formless jumble.

Earlier this morning, I heard a similar but slightly different song being uttered in a bush. I could tell it was being uttered by a bush finch, but I couldn't distinguish the species at the time. Now I am sure it was a Pezopetes. This song might be represented as follows:

[[image]]
" Trit-trit duh-duh" followed by twitter, flourish, and soft rattle
This song was repeated frequently, with only minor variations (mostly involving the preliminary doublets, any one of which might be repeated in any order).

The only time I got a good view of a bird singing some of these variable "songs" was during the later incident, right after the first MW-SN "greeting." At this time, the singing bird was just sitting in a more or less unritualized sitting posture, with slight CR (as far as I could tell, it had slight CR all the time this morning, both when vocal and when silent).

Transcription Notes:
[[image: sketch of song pattern"Tsawah-Tsawah "Trit-Tri Tsa-a-wa-ah Tsa-a-wah Tsewee"]] [[image: sketch of song pattern representing " Trit-trit duh-duh" followed by twitter, flourish, and soft rattle.]]