NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Matthew Medler of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology about the best bird sounds of 2025 from their vast collection of recordings, and why their selections made the list.

The more you know about bird song, the more you’re apt to be fascinated by this well-known ritual of spring. We all know spring is a prime time to hear birds. These bird sounds can range from a ...

I was sitting in solitude earlier this summer in an Adirondack chair in my backyard, when I realized I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought. Thanks to the app I’d just downloaded on my phone — the popular ...

“I’m… so… tired.” One September morning, you’ll hear those three plaintive, descending notes emerge from the edge of the yard, a new sound in this quiet ...

When it comes to copying R2-D2, the best bet seems to be small birds with small brains .

All air-breathing vertebrates have a larynx—a structure of muscles and folds that protects the trachea and, in many animals, vibrates and modulates to produce a stunning array of sounds. But birds, ...

Dan Stowell is a co-founder and shareholder of Warblr Ltd. He receives funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for his research on bird sounds. The sound of birds is ...

When birds and humans sing it sounds completely different, but now new research shows that the very same physical mechanisms are at play when a bird sings and a human speaks. When birds and humans ...