When the authors heard a Song Sparrow sing in the middle of the night, they wondered, do birds dream of singing? (Ted Anderson)
We’ve all heard it, right? The unexpected bit of song or surprise call…from a bird? OK, maybe you need to be bird-oriented to key into sounds like that. We certainly are! Evidence: Over the weekend, while our dog was making his final sniffs around the yard and otherwise taking care of doggy business, we heard, erupting from the hedges in our neighbor’s yard, the boisterous sliver of Song Sparrow song.
We’d stayed up late to finish a movie, so this was around midnight. The stars were brilliantly shining down through the cool air. All was peace and quiet. And then, that chortle—-just one phrase, sung just once. Then all went silent.
There are certainly bird species that vocalize primarily at night. Owls. Whip-poor-wills and other goatsuckers. There are also those that are mostly daytime singers who will also sing at night (kind of like people who mostly sing in the shower!). Mockingbirds come easily to mind, as do chats: Years ago, we stepped out of a car at night at Mom and Dad Childs’ former home in Winthrop and were thrilled to hear a Yellow-breasted Chat singing away in the overgrown field nearby! Yellow-breasted Chats are known to do this in their normal breeding range in the southern US, but they’re not even supposed to be here in Maine at all during the breeding season!
By contrast, the Song Sparrow we heard at midnight this past week didn’t seem to be singing the way they do for their daytime gig. We had to wonder: Was this Song Sparrow having a dream?
People who keep pet birds have frequently reported stories of their parrots and parakeets making different sounds while they sleep. We read one story of a person whose African Gray made sounds like a man talking or growling, frightening the parrot’s person in the middle of the night. Some parrot keepers have reported that their birds sometimes awaken seemingly disturbed, as if they had experienced a nightmare, and seek out reassurance from their human companion, the way a child does.
Some penguins dream in four-second intervals while incubating eggs. What might a four-second bird dream look like? (African penguin, photo by Bernard Dupont, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
Researchers have now well-documented that birds dream. In reading about this, we found that new research coming from a group called the Avian Sleep Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence. They and other scientists have been making some amazing discoveries.
For example, they’ve found that birds have both REM and non-REM sleep, and that the parts of a pigeon’s brain that process signals related to flying were sometimes activated during sleep. Were they actually dreaming of flying? Others have found that, in some songbirds, the muscles used in singing activated during sleep, indicating that the birds were dreaming of singing!
Perhaps that Song Sparrow we heard was experiencing the same thing people experience when they talk or even walk in their sleep!
Not all birds show regular sleep cycles. Frigatebirds, those big, black, long-winged birds that can soar long distances across tropical oceans, can allow alternating sides of the brain to sleep while flying for days. Some penguins, while incubating, sleep in a series of four-second mini-naps so they can remain vigilant against predators. Do they dream? What could a four-second dream be like?
What would a dream be like in one brain hemisphere when the other side of the brain is awake?
Pretty fascinating to consider. Makes us a little sleepy just thinking about it!
—Jeff & Allison Wells
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That’s something I never thought of before! It’s very interesting that birds have REM sleep and as a former African Gray Parrot, I believe that they would talk in their sleep!
Birds are fascinating creatures both while awake and, as it turns out, while asleep! Thank you for sharing!
Allison and Jeff Wells