• Relating to or denoting birds of a large order distinguished by having feet that are adapted for perching, including all songbirds.

  Example sentencesExamples

  • The bluethroat is a small passerine with moderate asynchronous hatching, typical of many passerine birds.
  • The magpie is monogamous, territorial, sedentary, and relatively long-lived for passerine birds, with a well-described biology.
  • The pied flycatcher is a small Palearctic migrant passerine bird.
  • The pied flycatcher is a small, migratory, singlebrooded passerine bird.
  • In a comparative study of passerine birds based on generalized least square models, we tested this hypothesis by exploring the interspecific relationship between overall brain size and repertoire size.
  • As is typical of passerine birds, nearly all mortality was the result of predation, and starvation was rare.
  • House sparrows are approximately 30-g passerine birds that are gregarious during and outside the breeding season.
  • Cracraft shows an unresolved three-way split between oscines (which form the large majority of passerine birds), suboscines, and New Zealand wrens.
  • The diversity of speckling is most pronounced in passerine birds (the perching or songbirds that make up 60 percent of all bird species).
  • Extrapair paternity is widespread within passerine birds and is indicative of sexual selection.
  • These animals include rodents, passerine birds and arthropods.
  • We compared chromatic contrast (color used for short-range detection) of each pair of spider and flower to detection thresholds computed in the visual systems of both Hymenopteran prey and passerine bird predator.
  • Begging by nestling passerine birds has become a model for studies in animal communication, particularly those examining the honest signaling of need.
  • The pied flycatcher is a small, migratory, passerine bird that is sexually dimorphic in color during the breeding season.
  • Ortolan buntings are small, migratory passerine birds, and in the breeding areas in Norway, pairs raise one clutch from May - July.
  • The visual system of most bird species, including all passerine birds tested to date, is sensitive to UV wavelengths.
  • The pied flycatcher is a small, hole-nesting, insectivorous passerine bird which usually is monogamous, but in which some 5-10% of the males may be polygynous.
  • However, these model predictions cannot explain the observation that some small passerine birds ‘bound’ while hovering or during steep climbs.
  • Falcons and cuckoos form a third segment of the gruimorphs; and, finally, the Piciformes and passerine birds are usually grouped together as a fourth segment.
  • Methods.-The Pied Flycatcher is a small, migratory, philopatric, and hole-nesting passerine bird of European woodlands.

• A passerine bird; a perching bird.

  Example sentencesExamples

  • I eagerly described the season's bounty of warblers as a ‘procession of precious passerines.’
  • Divers, grebes, geese, ducks, raptors, auks and passerines are the most affected especially in very hard weather which results in the surface of lakes and reservoirs freezing.
  • Because many birds, especially passerines, are still wild-caught, it is even more imperative to develop reliable biomarkers for aging.
  • Birds, particularly passerines, have served as the model system for testing many of the ideas on the evolution of begging.
  • Like a number of other passerines in both the Old and New Worlds, Catharus thrushes are nocturnal migrants.
  • Some Mesozoic enantiomithine birds had similar size and morphology to modern passerines, and it is tempting to speculate that they too had evolved some form of bounding flight.
  • That general finding is consistent with previous nonexperimental work in birds as well as with experimental studies involving passerines and colonial seabirds.
  • Other authors have stated that incubation in cowbirds only differs from other passerines in the minimum reported.
  • In passerines, altricial nestlings possess brightly colored gapes and engage in vigorous behavioral displays directed toward a feeding parent.
  • The warblers and orioles and other passerines recently left the cool forests of the upper Midwest and southern Canada.
  • Its diverse habitats attract many species of passerines, or songbirds.
  • Cliff swallows are highly colonial passerines that breed throughout most of western North America.
  • However, small passerines carry very small food loads, and storm petrels very large ones.
  • Prior to biotelemetry, the migration energetics of Swainson's thrushes and other small passerines could not be measured directly and had to be estimated.
  • We also saw the usual variety of gulls, raptors, woodpeckers, and passerines throughout the morning.
  • Densities of shorebirds and passerines were calculated as the mean number of birds per plot, which was then extrapolated to birds per square kilometre.
  • Year-round territoriality with permanent pairbonds is a common breeding system of tropical passerines but is nearly absent in temperate passerines.
  • Barn swallows are small insectivorous passerines that feed on the wing.
  • Study population and field methods. Song Sparrows are territorial passerines found in a variety of brushy and moist habitats throughout most of North America.
  • Eastern bluebirds are socially monogamous passerines that breed throughout eastern North America.

The order Passeriformes comprises more than half of all bird species, the remainder being known informally as the non-passerines. All passerines in Europe belong to the suborder Oscines (the oscine passerines), so that the term is effectively synonymous with ‘songbird’ there (see songbird). Those of the suborder Deutero-Oscines (the suboscine passerines) are found mainly in America