Abstrakt
The Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella has several song types that differ in their ending. A research project from the Czech Republic has been analyzing this song variability on a large scale across Europe and New Zealand.
The aim of the present work is to examine the situation in Switzerland, for which the first author has recorded the songs of 42 individual Yellowhammers in five cantons. The songs belonged to four different dialects known from other parts of Europe.
Additional data from a citizen science project complemented the regional distribution pattern. Within Central and Northeastern Switzerland, a Yellowhammer dialect with only one long element in the terminal part of the song was found, whereas south of the Alps and in Western Switzerland additional song dialects with two long terminal elements occurred.