Relative Pitch and the Song of Black-Capped Chickadees

Chickadees, like people, have a strong sense of relative pitch. These birds use skillful, precise pitch changes to advertise their quality and attract mates

Ron Weisman, Laurene Ratcliffe

The Virtuosity of Chickadees

When we began studying songbirds almost twenty years ago, we chose black-capped chickadees because they were abundant and sang simple songs. Subsequently, our work has revealed that chickadees' seemingly simple songs present precise, discrete relative pitch cues. Males shift the starting pitch of their songs to match a rival's song as a threat and to display their vocal virtuosity to females during the dawn chorus. By preserving the relative-pitch relations between notes during these shifts, males provide reliable clues about their identity and quality.

Music has been part of the human experience since our inception as a species. Like chickadees, young humans learn about relative pitch from adult humans. Humans use precise, discrete pitch changes in music and transpose melodies while keeping the intervals between the notes constant. As among songbirds, humans tend to find musicians sexually attractive. Under the circumstances, it seems remarkably easy to relate to black-capped chickadees. It appears likely that at least several, if not most or all, oscine species can perceive relative pitch changes. As a resource, relative pitch may be ignored by some songbirds and used by others, but it is certainly exploited relentlessly by black-capped chickadees.

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