Selective vocal learning in a sparrow.

Male swamp sparrows learn their songs; they fail to learn songs of the sympatric song sparrow. Syllables from tape recordings of both species of sparrow were spliced into an array of swamp sparrow-like and song sparrow-like temporal patterns. Swamp sparrows learned only those songs made of swamp sparrow syllables. They did so irrespective of whether the temporal pattern was swamp sparrow-like or song sparrow-like. Selectivity was retained by birds reared in total isolation from adult conspecific sounds.