Subsong of Oriental Magpie-Robin 

A male Oriental Magpie-Robin is singing its subsong these days in my home garden. It sings from inside of a dense flower tree, fairly well hidden in the foliage, perched about six feet from the ground, and sings mostly in mid morning and afternoon. These singing sessions are long, and also phrases of the subsong are much longer than those of the magpie-robin’s full song.

Male Magpie-Robins start to sing their subsong when their breeding season approaches. Once they are ready to start their breeding activities the males sing their loud, full song from a quite exposed, high positions (i.e. top of tall trees, top of TV antennas) within the territory of each pair. Their subsong is quite soft and hardly heard beyond several metres unlike the full song.  Composition of the subsong is also very much different to that of the full song, a phrase of it is quite long and composed of a number of different softly uttered notes.

Tail of this male magpie-robin is in moult. It’s another sign that it is getting ready for on coming breeding season (they moult their feathers and get ready to breeding with their newly grown fresh plumage). Once it gets its tail feathers fully grown it will soon start to sing its loud phrases of full song from tree tops and the like.

I recorded a couple of sessions of the singing male and parts of these phrases of its subsong are featured below. (A Spotted Dove also sings in the background).