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A classification of wordless yodel melodies from five different regions in Switzerland was made. For our analysis, we used a total of 217 yodel tunes from five regions, which can be grouped into two larger regions, central and north-eastern Switzerland. The results show high accuracy of classification, therefore confirming the existence of regional differences in yodel melodies. The most salient features, such as rhythmic patterns or intervals, demonstrate some of the key differences in pairwise comparisons, which can be confirmed by a postanalysis survey of the relevant scores.

Animals that show aggression often risk injury and incur steep energetic costs. Thus, aggression should occur at such times and towards such opponents as to maximize fitness. We tested hypotheses predicting adaptive territorial aggression in the common loon, a species in which ease of observation of territory owners and floaters (prebreeders) seeking to evict them provide a rare window onto owner-floater competition. As predicted, older, more competitive floaters (4-year-olds and upwards) tended to intrude into territories that had produced chicks the previous year (and, hence, were of high quality). Older floaters also showed predicted increases in aggression and territorial yodeling, and a lower rate of submissive behaviors than younger floaters. Floaters of all ages intruded more often than neighboring territory owners, as predicted, but tended to avoid territories with chicks. For their part, owners yodeled more often and behaved more aggressively during chick-rearing, although yodels peaked in frequency 2 weeks before aggression, suggesting that males with young chicks yodel to discourage intrusions, but employ aggression to protect older chicks. Territory owners showed the predicted higher rates of aggression and yodeling towards older, more dangerous floaters than towards young, submissive ones. However, territorial pairs did not treat floaters more aggressively than neighbors, overall. Moreover, owners showed no spike in aggression nor yodeling following a year with chicks, perhaps to avoid providing social information to floaters that use chicks as social information to target territories for eviction.

The intention of the study was to determine whether male Black-throated Divers (Gavia arctica) can be distinguished individually by their vocalization. The songs of 19 male Black-throated Divers (BTDs) were recorded in their territories in the same lake area in 2018–2021 in Finland. The songs were recorded in one year in nine territories and in 2–4 consecutive years in ten territories. The song consists of one introductory phrase and one or more repeat phrases. Seventeen variables were measured from the spectrograms of the introductory phrase and the first repeat phrase. These variables included the frequencies and duration of different parts of the spectrogram. The discriminant analyses were used to examine the recognition of individual BTDs based on the spectral analysis of the male yodels (n = 297) in different territories (n = 19). The discriminant analysis showed that when using 14 of the variables of the yodels, the discriminant analysis classified the yodels to correct territories at a rate of almost 98% based on the cross-validation of all data. This suggests that the same individuals defend their territory from year to year.

The actress and cabaret performer, who hosted her own children's TV show in Austria before she relocated to Seattle to work with Teatro Zinzanni, is bringing authentic Germanic flair to Spokane's newest Oktoberfest this weekend.

Historical field recordings offer insight both into past performance routines and into the processes and contexts of musical practices in their time. In the wake of renewed interest in musical traditions of the alpine region, I reassessed the magnetic tape recordings created by the Jena University doctoral student Wolfgang Sichardt (1911–2002) from multiple perspectives. The premises and context of the field research in 1936 are reconstructed, in part based on original correspondence; the reception and impact of the research in Germany and Switzerland are assessed; and the exact origin of the recordings is determined wherever possible. Descriptive transcriptions of the entire corpus of yodel and alphorn music visualize the content. The 1936 field recordings, made by Sichardt during a six-week field trip to different areas of Switzerland, document yodels, folk songs, and alphorn melodies on 12 magnetic tape reels, recorded with the latest technology at the time, the AEG Magnetophon K-2. Although the results were published afterward (Sichardt, 1939), the magnetic tape recordings remained private until they were donated to the Vienna Phonogram Archive in 2008, and only in the past decade have they been discovered by researchers.