We present a high-resolution, densely-sampled dataset of wild bird songs collected over multiple years from a single population of Great Tits (Parus major) in the UK. The dataset includes over 1,000,000 individual acoustic units from 109,963 richly annotated songs, sung by more than 400 individual birds, and provides unprecedented detail on the vocal behaviour of wild birds. We have made the dataset and associated software tools publicly available with the aim that other researchers can benefit from this resource and use it to further our understanding of bird vocal behaviour in the wild.
The dataset documents changes in individual performance, the appearance and disappearance of birds—and with them, their songs—and highlights just how much behavioural variation there is along every dimension of what could at first seem a relatively simple trait. Some birds display metronome-like regularity in their performance, while others have highly variable or unusual songs. The longest song recorded is approximately 20 times longer than the shortest song (and, coincidentally, was sung by one of the largest great tits ever recorded in the Wytham population). These are a few examples:
This was part of Nilo's PhD research project. Data were collected from 2020 to 2023 in Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire, UK.