Contact calls, or companion calls as they are also referred to, are basically the social chatter between a group of birds, or bonded partners, who know each other intimately as they go about their business.
Some contact calls are given when birds are flying across the landscape. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos are well known for this. Likewise, various crow species reportedly issue meaning-specific contact calls when flying over another crow’s territory, presumably like a nod of the hat to indicate they’re just passing through and don’t want any trouble.
Flocking birds, such as lorikeet, silvereyes and migrating honeyeaters, regularly make incessant contact calls while on the wing. This in-flight chit-chat (I’m guessing here…I mean they could be making up hilarious jokes or solving cryptic word riddles or maybe just gossiping about ducks….) is probably an important means of maintaining a tight flock formation and social bonding.
I was once standing beneath a vast circling thermal of ibis and in the stillness of the day I could clearly detect the faint murmuring of hundreds of soft voices talking among themselves. I did wonder at the time what they might have been talking about as the soaring column of birds slowly drifted across the open plains.
Likewise, I have sometimes found myself pausing on my way to bed to look up into the night sky as a flock of unseen woodswallows or rainbow bee-eaters passes overhead. Their distinct chatter drifting down to my ears marked the only evidence of their existence as they drifted through the darkness during their seasonal migratory peregrination.
More often though, I encounter contact calling in birds that are feeding together, including canopy feeders like king parrot and catbirds, as well as ground birds like logrunner, whipbird and quails. I think just about every species of songbird that I’ve spent time with engages in contact calls. If you think you know an exception to this rule, I’d love to hear about it!
Perhaps more than any other voice, it is the contact call that demonstrates what busy social lives birds live and how most birds desire the companionship of their fellows.
Welcome Swallow
The contact calls of swallows are entirely alien to us. Their high-pitched chittering has the appearance of compressing reams of information into short bursts of staccato white-noise.
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