Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press
"It wouldn't surprise me, but no one's looked to see if nuthatches have a similar amount of information in their call. Perhaps that's a project I should do," he said.
Charles Eldermire of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology called the finding "another interesting example of interspecific communication brought to light."
However, he said, "There is no way to tell if they are responding to 'encoded' information, or simply to intensity of the call."
"My main criticism hinges on the fact that they tested two categories of very different sounding calls, one of which averages twice the number of D notes than the other," he said.
"In many ways, I would consider these two calls as distinct, and that, it would seem, might be where the argument of importance gets a little murky," said Eldermire, who was not part of the research team.
Andre Dhondt, a professor of ornithology at Cornell, noted that "birds in general respond to each other's alarm calls."
Also, said Dhondt, who was not part of Templeton's research team, black-capped chickadees have been known to produce false alarm calls, causing other birds to fly away, leaving the cheating chickadees to enjoy a food source by itself.
