Current Biology 
Embargoed until October 4, 2018 11:00 EDT (News release from Cell Press)
Researchers show for the first time that they can teach young, wild sparrows how to sing new tunes. The wild birds then passed the new songs on to the next generation. The findings also provide the first experimental evidence that timing of song exposure influences wild birds’ vocal learning. The sparrows preferentially learned songs heard the summer they hatched and then again at the outset of their first breeding season the next year.
Lead author: Dan Mennill, University of Windsor – dmennill@uwindsor.ca