The trade in Asian songbirds is contributing to declining populations of many species in the wild. The Chinese Hwamei Garrulax canorus is a popular songbird endemic to Asia that is traded both domestically and internationally. The songbird trade in the USA, particularly involving Asian songbirds, has not been well studied. We hypothesised that despite Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix II regulations, Chinese Hwamei are traded illegally in the USA. We scrutinised the CITES Trade Database, US seizure and confiscation records, publicly available records, and websites to assess the imports and availability of Chinese Hwamei in the USA. Since the species was first listed in CITES Appendix II in 2000, there have been three reports of Chinese Hwamei imports into the USA, one of which included four live birds, compared with approximately 40 records of illegally imported birds. Online advertisements of Chinese Hwamei for sale show that both wild-caught and captive-bred birds are easily available. We believe this indicates that there is both legal and illegal trade of the species in the USA. Based on these findings we concluded that more research into the songbird trade, and specifically songbird trade in the USA, is warranted. We recommend additional assessments of CITES and non-CITES songbird species and encourage additional species protection when illegal trade is occurring. We also recommend that the relevant authorities in the USA better scrutinise the trade in non-native songbirds and take meaningful action against anyone found unlawfully importing and trading in illegally sourced songbirds. Finally, we recommend that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species includes international trade as a threat to the Chinese Hwamei in order to raise concern and motivate action for this songbird.

Environmental conditions during the early life stages of birds can have significant effects on the quality of sexual signals in adulthood, especially song, and these ultimately have consequences for breeding success and fitness. This has wide-ranging implications for the rehabilitation protocols undertaken in wildlife hospitals which aim to return captive-reared animals to their natural habitat. Here we review the current literature on bird song development and learning in order to determine the potential impact that the rearing of juvenile songbirds in captivity can have on rehabilitation success. We quantify the effects of reduced learning on song structure and relate this to the possible effects on an individual's ability to defend a territory or attract a mate. We show the importance of providing a conspecific auditory model for birds to learn from in the early stages post-fledging, either via live- or tape-tutoring and provide suggestions for tutoring regimes. We also highlight the historical focus on learning in a few model species that has left an information gap in our knowledge for most species reared at wildlife hospitals.

In order to analyse quantitative radar observations of bird movements, one needs to know the dimensions of the air space surveyed by the radar. The present study shows how to calibrate the operational beam width and the maximum range of any radar for cross sections for different body sizes of songbirds. The trial used an X-band fan beam ship radar of 25 KW (Furuno Fr-2125) and a captive balloon. Metal spheres of different diameters, fastened to the bottom of the balloon at defined distances, corresponding to the radar cross sections of song birds, were moved in all three dimensions of the air space. Simultaneously to the location by radar, the position of the suspended sphere was measured by theodolites.

No single theory so far proposed gives a wholly satisfactory account of the origin and maintenance of bird-song dialects. This failure is the consequence of a weak comparative literature that precludes careful comparisons among species or studies, and of the complexity of the issues involved. Complexity arises because dialects seem to bear upon a wide range of features in the life history of bird species. We give an account of the principal issues in bird-song dialects: evolution of vocal learning, experimental findings on song ontogeny, dialect descriptions, female and male reactions to differences in dialect, and population genetics and dispersal.

We present a synthetic theory of the origin and maintenance of song dialects, one that accommodates most of the different systems reported in the literature. The few data available suggest that large, regional dialect populations are genetically differentiated; this pattern is correlated with reduced dispersal between dialects, assortative mating by females, and male-male exclusion. At the same time, “subdialects” may be formed within regional dialects. Subdialect clusters are usually small and may represent vocal mimicry among a few adjacent territorial males. The relative importance of genetic and social adaptation may contribute to the emergence of subdialects; their distinctiveness may be correlated with the degree of polygyny, for example. Thus, subdialect formation is linked to one theory of the evolution of repertoire size, but data are too fragmentary to examine this idea critically.