CHAFFINCH (Fringilla coelebs)- Pinson des arbres
Male Chaffinch © Frank Jarvis
SUMMARY
The most common bird in Switzerland! Found in parks, gardens, forests and woodlands up to and beyond the tree-line. It has a very characteristic rolling song.
This is the commonest bird in Switzerland, found everywhere in parks gardens and woodlands, up to and above the treeline. Principally they pick seeds from the ground but can also feed on insects. Its cascading song is one of the hallmarks of the spring and summer, often dominating the soundscape in many places in both broad-leafed and pine woodlands.
The most frequently heard song - which seems to be used for both territorial defence and mate attraction, is a fairly short phrase both accelerating and descending, it is in 3 parts - starting with a clear "chip-chip-chip" call, then getting faster and descending to a lower level, then a little trill finishing off with a flourish at the end.
Chaffinch male © Arlette Berlie
The three stages of the song can be seen quite clearly as you follow the sonogram, look for the rapid trill just before the end, and then the final flourish which looks like a rapid upwards and then slower downwards swing of the last note- “wheeouu”:
Chaffinch female © Arlette Berlie
The song of the Chaffinch, like most species is learned, and so dialects can develop, but interestingly they do not seem to represent different geographical regions. There is a large variation across the whole range, so what you may hear in your locality may differ slightly from what I present here. A classic study by Marler (1952) investigated varieties of song from various places in the UK and France and showed that it was the latter part of the song that was more variable than the start. But even then not all the birds in one area sang in exactly the same manner, and there were still variations within one population. Here are a four examples of songs recorded all within a 40km radius of the above, you can hear how they are all in the same basic format but with small differences between individuals:
Pay attention to the songs that seem very different - here is one recorded in February that sounds “erratic” and mostly lacks the flourish at the end. As I said earlier Chaffinches hatch with a basic song “template” fixed in their genes, but the refinements are learned during the summer they hatch and in the early spring that follows. So my guess is that this next song is of a bird in the foreground entering its first breeding season and is still learning the full song. If you listen (or watch the video) carefully you can hear that in the fourth delivery it manages, at the 20s mark, to get the flourish at the end correct:
But Chaffinches also make a series of other, mostly single note calls of a fairly wide variety - up to 8 have been documented although there seem to be fewer used in winter than in the breeding season. These are used under a variety of circumstances - one very often is heard once is a "buzz" noise which is said to signal aggression:
In the sonogram this is, as you might expect, a pretty dull blob of sound made every 1 - 1.5 secs at about 4 Khz:
(That was a Great Tit that called just before the third buzz on the sonogram).
A commonly heard call is what I call the “referee’s whistle” - think of those whistles with a “pea” in them that rattle a little when blown:
You can see the vibrato (the “pea” rattling) in the sonogram below:
In some places this call is supposed to herald the onset of rain, and so is named the “rain call”. But I have not found a scientific basis to this story!
These calls may help keep a pair together - in dense vegetation or in flight, or perhaps may also be used in territorial disputes - its all very complicated. There are two other commonly heard calls, one is an upward inflected whistle - "hweet" and the other a sharp, metallic "chink" sometimes uttered as a pair - "chink-chink", the latter I have seen referred to as an alarm call. They are often referred to as "rain" calls, presumably a comment on their weather forecasting abilities (it's not true !), but in reviewing the literature different authors give this name to different calls.
To give you an idea how complex it can get -- look at this next sonogram - it has all three of these in it - the buzz, the whistle and the chink - I think there were three separate birds interacting, but exactly what they were doing I have no clue !
So there you have some idea of how these common little birds speak to each other. But this is not the end of the story. About a million years ago Chaffinches dispersed from mainland Europe into the Volcanic islands of the Atlantic - to the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. Each of these groups have evolved their own characteristics, and recently they have been recognised as true species in their own right, different from the one discussed here.
You can find out the details of this story and listen to my recordings of the Azores Chaffinch (Fringilla moreletti) by clicking HERE.
Detailed study of a road-killed male Chaffinch. © Frank Jarvis
