Cisticolas - Chirping, Croaking, and More

BirdNote^®

Cisticolas

Written by Rick Wright

This is BirdNote.
[Whistling Cisticola (141025) 07:13 and following]
This cheerful song belongs to the Whistling Cisticola [siss-TICK-uh-luh] – a little brown bird from a big family of fifty-odd species. There’s the simple but cheerful Zitting Cisticola, familiar to people around the Mediterranean:
[Zitting Cisticola (84564) 00:06 and following]
Africa’s Singing Cisticola is musically more ambitious:
[Singing Cisticola (14366) 00:29 and following]
Just what the Winding Cisticola is so urgently winding up, isn’t entirely clear:
[Winding Cisticola (1025) 00:04 and following]
And then there are the Tinkling, Trilling, Rattling, Whistling, Chattering, Bubbling, Churring, and Chirping Cisticolas.
[Chirping Cisticola (94704) 00:10 and following]
In Africa, where most of the species are found, they occupy just about any open habitat, from marshlands to agricultural fields. And they look pretty much alike: brown, stumpy-tailed, with beady eyes and stubby bills. But you can tell the males apart by the songs they sing – either in flight or singing from a conspicuous perch. Maybe none is more distinctive than this one – the Croaking Cisticola:
[Croaking Cisticola (1497) 00:04 and following]
For BirdNote, I’m Mary McCann.

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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.  Whistling Cisticola [141025] by Michael J. Andersen; Zitting Cisticola [84564] by Matthew D. Medler; Singing Cisticola [14366] by Myles E.W. North; Winding Cisticola [1025] by Peter G. Kaestner; Chirping Cisticola [94704] by Robert B. Payne; Croaking Cisticola [1497] by Peter G. Kaestner.
BirdNote's theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Sallie Bodie
© 2016 Tune In to Nature.org    August 2016   Narrator: Mary McCann

ID#  cisticola-01-2016-08-30    cisticola-01