An Upper West Side Song for Winter’s End 

By Julia Zichello

I walked up Broadway yesterday. In front of me walked a man with a metal rolling cart. My headphones were on. The sun was bright. In between the notes in my ears, I heard a distant squeak. I glanced down at the rolling cart, but the sound wasn’t coming from there. Instead, way up above the scaffolding at the corner of 109th, at the tips of the bare branches of a street tree, I saw a single bird silhouetted against the bright blue sky. Off came my headphones. Squeak went the bird! 

It’s that time of year again. Songbirds are starting to sing to attract mates. About half of all bird species in the world are categorized as songbirds (or oscines). This is due to their specialized anatomical adaptations for singing. Some local songbirds include cardinals, starlings, robins, house sparrows, and even crows—but not pigeons, woodpeckers, owls, or water fowl. 

All birds have a pipe-like structure connected to their lungs called the syrinx (one exception is vultures in the Americas). The syrinx is shaped like an upside down “Y”, and is composed of rings of cartilage and musculature (similar to our larynx). In songbirds, the syrinx is capable of more nuanced and complex vibrations than in non songbirds. And when the syrinx moves it causes air molecules to vibrate just so: up and down they go, colliding with neighboring air molecules and producing sound waves we then perceive as song. 

Songbirds in temperate climates like New York City do not sing with the same frequency all year round. In the depths of winter, you will not hear many songbirds singing from the fire escapes. But then, how exactly do songbirds know that spring is on the way? 

Birds, like us, can sense that the days are growing longer this time of year, with modest blushing sunsets still hanging between the buildings at rush hour these days. The longer photoperiod (day length) causes birds to produce hormones that signal to their brains that it is time to sing. But, unlike us, birds do not sense light through their eyes alone; instead the sun penetrates through their thin skulls and is detected by specialized light sensing neurons in the brain’s hippocampus. Then, elongated cells called motor neurons communicate between the brain and the syrinx to initiate its movement. So, light leads to song. 

This coming week, if you listen closely between all of the other busy street sounds: squealing brakes on delivery trucks, honks galore, why-is-that-person-yelling, bikes whooshing past, two friends laughing, two dog friends barking, and even church bells sometimes — you will hear, sprinkled into this wild and varied soundscape — birdsong. 

It is brought to you by the Earth’s tilt, the Sun’s rays, a bird’s delicate and sensitive anatomy, and a whirlwind of molecular activity. The birds are definitely not singing for our benefit, but when you think of this nearly miraculous cascade of geological and biochemical right-place-at-the-right-time random events — it’s downright astonishing that we can perceive this fleeting phenomenon at all. 

When I walked back down Broadway, the single bird I saw earlier had been joined by a few other birds singing and fluttering up in the same tree at the corner. I also spotted some starlings down on the sidewalk, milling around outside the now-shuttered Absolute Bagels, eating what appeared to be the ghosts of bagels past. There was a streak of sun illuminating a portion of the sidewalk, reminding me that although the winter was long, the worst is over now and — according to the birds — it’s time to sing. 

Julia Zichello is an evolutionary biologist living on the Upper West Side and working on a bird book for Columbia University Press.

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