planet earth
BLEATING BIRDS Text and photos WOJCIECH JAROSZ
Close your eyes! Or better, read first what to imagine and then close them. Spring sunrise, a wet meadow, no rams nearby, and here you can hear bleating from the sky! Maybe not quite a ram's, goat's not quite so either, a bit strange... Aliens? 60
N
o, these are the performances of a certain aviator who tries to attract the attention of the ladies watching him during his courtship display. It sounds loudly when diving to the ground, but it does not generate the sound with the part of the body that other birds use for that. Feathered creatures, even if they are not among the most perfect singers, usually emit voice from the area of the broadly understood head. If it is not a perfectly muscular lower larynx, it may
be snapping or clattering with beaks, as in case of storks or rare great snipes. Well, it also happens that certain noises may be made by bird's wings in flight, as in mute swans and selected species of ducks. Our hero, on the other hand, bleats with its tail! The common snipe (Gallinago gallinago) or simply a snipe, although in Old Polish also called "a ram", owes the latter of the species names to the ability to put down the side rectrices in such a way that they begin to vibrate strongly during the flight. The result is a sound we hear,