Alarm calls have become a major interest in the study of communication complexity in animals and the evolution of language. To investigate the function and specificity of alarm calls, we explore the context of calls in Eurasian magpies. Eurasian magpie breeders are year-round territorial and live in stable neighbourhoods. Their offspring leave the territory a few weeks after fledging to join flocks of non-breeders until they obtain a breeding position usually not before 2 years of age. Magpies are common in the Netherlands and breed all over Wageningen and the surrounding towns and fields, making them easily accessible for research projects. They may fall prey to raptors such as sparrowhawks and terrestrial predators such as foxes and cats, and are reported to mob these intensely especially when their offspring is around. Yet they at least partially seem to use the same calls to defend their territory against conspecific intruders. We conduct a variety of experiments to explore context-specificity of, graded variation in and responses to calls in magpies.
Picture taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/125741467@N05/40188501813
