Even these, however, have a song of sorts, a softer twitter that is given between courting partners. Many members of the crow family ( Corvidae) communicate with croaks or screeches, which sound harsh to humans. However, although many songbirds have songs that are pleasant to the human ear, this is not invariably the case. The monotonous repetition of the common cuckoo or little crake can be contrasted with the variety of a nightingale or marsh warbler. Other birds (especially non-passeriforms) sometimes have songs to attract mates or hold territory, but these are usually simple and repetitive, lacking the variety of many oscine songs. The American robin, like most thrushes, has a complex near continuous song, consisting of discrete units often repeated and spliced by a string of pauses. Researchers believe this has more to do with the length of the windpipe.

While the song boxes of songbirds vary in size and intricacy, this does not necessarily determine the songbird's ability to voice their song. The organ is a solid, bony structure lined with a film of membranes which air passes through as the songbird calls. This organ, also known as a song box, can be found where the windpipe meets diverging bronchial tubes which lead to the lungs. Songbirds do, however, possess a highly developed vocal organ, the syrinx, that enables their sonorous activity. And still, not all songbirds proffer a call that is distinctly melodious. While almost all living birds give calls of some sort, well-developed songs are only given by a few lineages outside the songbirds. It is not to be confused with bird calls that are used for alarms and contact and are especially important in birds that feed or migrate in flocks. The larger a male's repertoire, the more females a male individual attracts. Female preference has shown in some populations to be based on the extent of a male's song repertoire. Sexual selection among songbirds is highly based on mimetic vocalization. The song in this clade is essentially territorial, because it communicates the identity and whereabouts of an individual to other birds, and also signals sexual intentions. Some evidence suggests that songbirds evolved 50 million years ago in the part of Gondwana that later became India, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and Antarctica, before spreading around the world.

There is a third perching bird lineage, the Acanthisitti from New Zealand, of which only two species remain alive today. The Tyranni have a simpler syrinx musculature, and while their vocalizations are often just as complex and striking as those of songbirds, they are altogether more mechanical sounding. Songbirds form one of the two major lineages of extant perching birds (~4,000 species), the other being the Tyranni (~1,000 species), which are most diverse in the Neotropics and absent from many parts of the world. The Passeriformes contains 5,000 or so species found all over the world, in which the vocal organ typically is developed in such a way as to produce a diverse and elaborate bird song. Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin oscen, 'songbird'. Song of a chipping sparrow ( Spizella passerina)Ī songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds ( Passeriformes). Eastern yellow robin ( Eopsaltria australis)

Songbird bird