Who taught you to speak? Where did you learn the sounds you produce today?

Humans and songbirds share a behaviour that’s rare in the animal kingdom: vocal learning. In this essay, Dan Mennill, professor of biology at the University of Windsor, takes readers through his groundbreaking research into how wild songbirds learn to sing. Focusing on a small community of Savannah sparrows on a grassy island in the Bay of Fundy, Mennill describes how he and his assistants taught a generation of young sparrows new song patterns. This fascinating essay guides readers to the cutting edge of avian bioacoustics.

With a beautiful cover art by Windsor-based illustrator Julia Hall, only 200 of these hand-bound, limited-edition chapbooks have been produced.

Royalties on all sales are donated to our publishing partner, the Pelee Island Bird Observatory.

About Dan Mennill

Dan Mennill is a Professor of Ornithology at the University of Windsor. He studies acoustic communication in wild animals, especially the songs of birds. He runs the Mennill Sound Analysis Laboratory where he and his research team use a field-based approach to study animals in Canada, France, U.S.A., Mexico, Costa Rica, and Colombia. Dan has helped pioneer many new playback and recording technologies for bioacoustic field studies. He has published more than 180 papers in scientific journals and supervised more than 40 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and a lifetime member of the Society of Canadian Ornithologists and the Animal Behaviour Society. Dan lives in Lasalle, Ontario, with his wife, professor and artist Stéphanie Doucet, and their two children.