Older male nightingales perform faster and more demanding
trills than their younger rivals. These findings were published by researchers
at the University of Basel and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in the
online edition of «Journal of Avian Biology». With up to 100 trill elements a
second, nightingales belong to the fastest singers.
Nightingales are famous for their large song repertoire:
Each male can perform around 200 different song types. Facing this great variety,
how can a female listener assess correctly if the male counterpart is a
suitable mating partner? It is unlikely that the size of the repertoire is used
as a performance indicator, since it would take about one hour for a male
nightingale to sing through its whole song list. Thus, it is more likely that
the quality of certain elements or song types are attended to for quick
assessment.