Birds make tons of different sounds: chirps, rattles, whistles, trills, croaks, drumming, and many many more. But how do birds make these sounds? Well there are two categories of sounds: vocal and non-vocal sounds.
Vocal sounds are made by a special organ only birds possess: the syrinx. The syrinx is located at the very top of the birds’ windpipe. The air that comes in through the windpipe causes thin membranes to vibrate and produce sound. The American Crow, one of our focal species, has one of the most developed syrinxes; this allows the crow to have a much greater variety of fine control over the sounds it makes! Unfortunately for us, many of these sounds are not musical to the human ear. One of this organ’s many complexities, having two separate tracheal (windpipe) tubes, can cause a super cool phenomenon called “duetting” of songs where a bird can produce two separate sounds at once! You can listen to an example of a Wood Thrush “duetting” with itself here. Non-vocal sounds can be made by other parts of the bird such as the wings or the beak.