Motor patterns of songs of swamp and song sparrows, Melospiza georgiana and M. melodia, deafened early in life display a significant degree of species-specific structure. Normal songs of the two species differ in the degree to which they are segmented. Swamp sparrow song consists of a single segment, and song sparrow songs are multisegmental. Song and swamp sparrows were deafened at 17 to 23 da...

The relative abundance of grassland birds was estimated on an 81,ha (200'acre) dry to dry'mesic sand prairie in south, west Wisconsin over an lS,year period (19S7-2004). Birds were surveyed three times during the breeding season on seven, 2,ha (5,acre) strip transects in six different burn units. We compared results to time since fire and other habitat features. The average rotation of prescrib...

BACKGROUND The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 virus has dramatically spread throughout Southeast Asia since its first detection in 1997. Merit Release Birds, such as the Eurasian Tree Sparrow, are believed to increase one's positive karma when kissed and released during Buddhist rituals. Since these birds are often in close contact with both poultry and humans, we investigated their pot...

Auditory evoked potentials were recorded from the surface of the brain in young swamp and song sparrows. Responses to pure tones indicate that both species have similar auditory sensitivity during the sensitive period for song learning. Responses to the song syllables extracted from the normal adult song of both species show evidence of hemispheric differences for swamp sparrows listening to co...

a total of 332 birds including 149 sparrows, 147 doves and 36 pigeons were examined for toxoplasma infection by both direct agglutination for detecting antibodies to toxoplasma and direct parasitological test to detect the cyst of toxoplasma in the brain of birds. the toxoplasma sero-positive rate (spr) in the examined birds was 10.5 percent (27 cases) with titers of 1:40 or higher and spr in e...

Levels of corticosterone (CORT), the primary avian stress hormone, tend to vary over space and time in passerines, but why this is so remains unclear. One reason may be differential need for immune defense. Typically, sustained high levels of CORT suppress immune activity in vertebrates. Thus, animals living where parasite threats are high might maintain low levels of CORT and mount weak CORT s...

Growing evidence exists that aposematic and toxic prey may be included in a predator's diet when the predator experiences physiological stress. The tree sparrow Passer montanus is known to have a significant portion of aposematic and toxic ladybirds in its natural diet. Here, we present experiments testing the attack and eating rate of the tree sparrow toward the invasive aposematic harlequin l...

Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) and grackles (Cassidix mexicanus) infected with muscle cysts of Sarcocystis were fed to opposums (Didelphis virginiana) and fecal sporocysts from the latter were given to sparrows (Passer domesticus, Family Ploceidae), canaries (Serinus canarius, Family Fringillidae) and ducks (Anas platyrhynchos, Family Anatidae). Asexual parasites were found in the endothelium of spa...