You can’t teach an adult bird a new tune. Or can you? New research proves that wild Savannah Sparrows can learn to sing different melodies at two ages, shedding light on critical learning periods for songbirds. Previously only seen in laboratory settings, this is the first experimental study to show the behavior in wild subjects. A team of researchers, led by Dan Mennill, a professor at the University of Windsor, spent six years banding and monitoring a population of Savannah Sparrows on Kent Island in New Brunswick, Canada. Over five generations, they consistently saw that males that came back to the isle to breed as adults were able to pick up new songs belonging to distant Savannah Sparrow populations. Not only that, a few subjects even passed the notes on to younger birds in the locale. The results were published in Current Biology last week. Savannah Sparrows, which are found in grasslands and coastal habitats across North America, sing slightly varied tunes...