Profs & Pints DC: Bird Songs—A Listeners’ Guide

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Bird Songs—A Listeners’ Guide,” on hearing and understanding our feathered friends’ messages, with Stephen Ferguson, visiting assistant professor of biology at the University of Richmond and a physiobehavioral ecologist who extensively researches birds.

Song fills the air each spring as birds shake off the winter and stake their claims. For millennia writers from Aristotle to Darwin have drawn inspiration from their melodies. Yet we remain nothing more than eavesdroppers of conversations in unknown languages and find ourselves wondering: What are the birds saying, and to whom?

Gain a better understanding of birds’ songs—and what we can learn from them—with Professor Stephen Ferguson, who has researched bird brains, behavior, and physiology throughout the nation and around the world.

He’ll discuss how male birds learn and remember how to sing, using a brain that shrinks and grows every year. He’ll show how the meaning of songs changes…