If silent feathers are the 🦉 prerogative, noisy feathers are a common adaptation in many birds & it is the Snipe’s version that I like best. During the breeding season, male & female Snipe make a far-carrying humming during diving flight, the source of which puzzled ornithologists until ~1850.🌿🌏🧪🧵1/ - ThreadSky

cmbeale.bsky.social • 98 days ago

If silent feathers are the 🦉 prerogative, noisy feathers are a common adaptation in many birds & it is the Snipe’s version that I like best. During the breeding season, male & female Snipe make a far-carrying humming during diving flight, the source of which puzzled ornithologists until ~1850.🌿🌏🧪🧵1/

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cmbeale.bsky.social•98 days ago

Early naturalists thought the noise must be vocal, then a theory developed that, as with familiar noises from Mute Swans and Pigeons, wings may be responsible. Proposed by the German ornithologist Johann Naumann, one copy of his hypothesis was printed with a typo that switched wing to tail. 2/

cmbeale.bsky.social•98 days ago

Another ornithologist read this version, took it seriously & ridiculed it in a pre-internet example of the Reply Guy. But the exchange was noticed by the curator of birds in the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who checked his specimens & identified that outer tail feathers of snipe are unique...

cmbeale.bsky.social•98 days ago

He replicated the noise perfectly by strapping feathers to a stick & whirling it like a bull-roarer around the museum https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1858.tb06364.x. We now know that the feathers make this noise not by vibrating as a whole, but through allowing the rear half ...

cmbeale.bsky.social•98 days ago

of the otherwise very stiff tail feather to flutter like a flag along a hinge created by a section of the feather with unhooked barbs. Snipe use this noise in displays, but also in aggressive encounters & while defending their nest: maybe predators find the noise that accompanies a diving snipe odd.

cmbeale.bsky.social•98 days ago

Snipe are just 1 among at least 27 groups that have independently evolved non-vocal communication. While flutter is the most common mechanism, other #birds use methods from percussion to stridulation https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/218/21/3520/14411/Aeroelastic-flutter-of-feathers-flight-and-the. To hear snipe drumming check here https://xeno-canto.org/595648!

wellmanneredxs.bsky.social•97 days ago

Fascinating thread - thank you Colin! 🥁

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