Seasonal variation in dawn song characteristicsin the common nightingale

Many male temperate zone passerines show a marked peak of singing activity before sunrise. The two mainfunctions of this so-called dawn chorus are mate attraction and territory defence. We examined how seasonalpatterns of different dawn song characteristics were related to mating status and to the breeding cycleof females in the common nightingale, Luscinia megarhynchos. We investigated two measures of songoutput: song rate and percentage performance time. We also calculated the proportion of