Flight Display Song of the Vermilion Flycatcher

Abstract

A number of authors have qualitatively described the songs of Vermilion Flycatchers (Pyrocephalus rubinus) given during flight display, but no spectrograms or quantitative analyses are available. We present such a description based on displays of 14 different males. Our analysis confirms the impressions of earlier authors that the flight song is closely similar to that given by perched birds, but also revealed an important difference: most flight display songs also included an extra element known as the peent vocalization. The peent is also an alarm call, given during male-male and male-female interactions, as well as during foraging bouts. Besides reporting on the common use of peent vocalizations by perched Vermilion Flycatchers, we now describe the frequency and use of peent vocalizations in flight display songs.