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Charles
Walcott Professor Dean of the University Faculty W255 Seeley G. Mudd Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 Phone - Office: (607) 254-4382 Fax: (607) 254-1303 Email: cw38@cornell.edu |
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Research Interests
Male Common Loons, Gavia immer, produce a territorial vocalization called the "yodel". Using a banded population of Loons, we have been analyzing tape recorded yodels to measure in which ways the yodels differ between males and how consistent these variations are from year to year. We have developed a statistical model that allows us to recognize an individual male within the population. Yodels differ greatly between loon populations and there is a general geographic trend as well. We have recently found that while an individual males yodel is stable year after year on the same territory, of the sixteen occasions when the male loon changed territory, on thirteen of these it changed its yodel. The change doesn’t seem to be related to the change in female because when the female changes, it has no effect on the male’s yodel. Nor does it seem to be related to the yodels of loons in neighboring lakes; the change in yodel was just as likely to make it similar to that of the neighbor as it was to increase the difference. Surprisingly, in the ten cases where we have recording from the previous resident of the territory, in all ten cases the invading loon changed his yodel to increase the difference. We have no idea why this happens.
Recent Publications
Walcott, C. and David Evers 2000, Loon Vocal Tagging: An Evaluation of its Feasibility Using a Banded Population of Loons. In McIntyre, J.W. and D.C. Evers (eds.). 2000 Loons: Old history and new findings. Proceedings of a Symposium from the 1997 meeting, American Ornithologists' Union. North American Loon Fund, Holderness, N.H.
Walcott, C. 2000 Loony Tunes, Seney National Wildlife Refuge Newsletter.
Walcott, C., Evers, D, Froehler, M. and A. Krakauer, 1999, Individuality in "Yodel" calls recorded from a banded population of Common Loons, Gavia immer. Bioacoustics 10: 101-114.
Walcott, C. 1996. Pigeon homing: Observations, experiments and confusions. J. exp. Biol. 199:21-27.
Walcott, C. 1992. Pigeons at magnetic anomalies: the effects of loft location. J. exp. Biol. 170:127-141.
Walcott, C. 1989. The disorientation of pigeons at Jersey Hill. In Proceedings of The Royal Institute of Navigation, RIN 89, Cardiff (with A.I. Brown).
Walcott, C. 1989. Show me the way you go home. Nat. Hist. Mag., pp. 40-46, Nov.
Courses Taught
Introductory Biology for Majors (BioG 101-104); Introduction to Behavior (BioNB 221); Bird Song