Fall River native and songsmith Joe Raposa brought joy to millions.

While you may not know his name, you likely know his songs. A famous one, from Sesame Street (and also sung by the Carpenters), might be the theme song for wild birds this time of year. 

Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Don’t worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song

With the increased light, birds have begun to sing loud and strong. Start by thanking their hormones for the morning chorus.  The light triggers the birds’ pineal glands to secrete less melatonin, which is the hormone that manages their circadian rhythms. Testosterone will increase in male birds, causing their reproductive structures to grow and their mating drive to increase, and stimulating them to sing. Female birds’ upsurge in their sex hormone, estradiol, jolts their brain to be more responsive to male songs by dulling their reception of other sounds.

Bird sounds can be divided into two categories: songs and calls. Calls are simple sounds that serve to signal danger and other flock communication.  Songs are more complex and are used during the breeding season for territory, courtship, and mating.

It is the syrinx that is responsible for sound. This vocal organ is located at the base of the bird’s trachea or windpipe. Birds that lack this structure, such as vultures, cannot sing and will grunt and hiss. Some birds with syrinxes also use additional sounds to communicate. These auditory activities include woodpeckers drumming, barn owls clicking their bills, or feather vibrations used by hummingbirds.

Songs can further be broken down into types or versions. Some birds are one-hit wonders, singing the same song over and over. Others can have up to 20 song versions, and brown thrashers blow away the competition for most types of songs. Scientists have identified 2,000 repertoires for them.

Learning songs is an intricate dance between adult birds and their chicks. Birds have an innate ability to sing but learn and improve with help from their parents and/or other birds. Parents even provide feedback to their young to help them develop their songs. Some birds, such as white crested sparrows, can learn only in a short period after birth, while others, including European starlings, are lifelong learners.

British ornithologist William Thorpe pioneered bird song studies in the 1950s. The son of a suffragist and, himself an eventual conscious objector to World War II, wanted to find out if songs were instinctual or learned. He took newly hatched finches from their nests and raised them without parental song. He learned that while these birds did sing, their songs were abnormal and atypical of the ones that heard their parents or other wild birds sing.

It is hard not to be grateful and appreciative for the increase in birdsong this time of year. It raises our spirits in a way that another group of songsters, Earth Wind and Fire, so well-articulated:

When you feel down and out
Sing a song (it’ll make your day) yeah, yeah
You, it’s the time to shout, oh now
Sing a song (it’ll make a way) yeah
Sometimes it’s hard to care
Sing a song (it’ll make your day)
A smile so hard to bear
Sing a song (it’ll make a way) yeah, oh no

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.