Bioacoustical structure and possible functional significance of wing display vocalisation during courtship of the African Orange-bellied Parrot Poicephalus rufiventris

Abstract

Venuto, V., Bottoni, L. & Massa, R. 2000. Bioacoustical structure and possible functional significance of wing display vocalisation during courtship of the African Orange-bellied Parrot Poicephalus rufiventris. Ostrich 71 (1 & 2): 131–135.

We report here on a bioacoustical and contextual analysis of Orange-bellied Parrot vocalisations recorded in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. We analysed a total of 154 vocalizations of which 110 were simple calls pertaining to five different types (A and B contact calls, whistle, flight call, and trill call) while 44 were complex calls (wing stretching and wing display songs) totalling three minutes of record. All simple calls examined appeared to be shorter than one second and sexually dimorphic. In addition, the longest and most structured vocalisations lasting 1–5 sec, wing stretching and wing display courtship song, appeared to be complex bioacoustic products in which a number of shorter units used by birds in completely different contexts may be recognised. It is argued that this assemblage of simple calls into a courtship song may have been important in the evolution of parrot mimicry for the search of social contact.