Data for: The relationships of breeding stage to daytime singing behaviour and song perch height in Bermuda White-eyed Vireos (Vireo griseus bermudianus)

Bird song is crucial for attracting mates and defending territories, but different types of song or different singing behaviours may be involved in acquiring or maintaining each resource. Furthermore, male songbirds may adjust when and where they sing throughout the breeding season, depending on their breeding stage. However, such relationships remain untested in several avian taxa. Here, we studied male Bermuda White-eyed Vireos (Vireo griseus bermudianus), a passerine with two distinct song types (discrete and rambling), to test the mate attraction and territory defence hypotheses. We compare song production and song perch height among different stages of the breeding season and during the non-breeding season. We show that male vireos produce both song types during the breeding and non-breeding seasons, suggesting dual roles in mate choice and territorial defence. Song production did not differ significantly between the breeding and non-breeding seasons, but, within the breeding seaso..., We audio-recorded the daytime (0700–1200 h) singing behaviour of 12 marked male birds throughout most of the subspecies' breeding season (April 2019 – August 2019). Of these 12 males, we found and re-recorded 11 during the following non-breeding season (December 2019 – January 2020). As part of our sampling regime, we visited one of our two sites each day during favorable weather (i.e., no rain and little to no wind), alternating between sites each day. In total, we visited the Ferry Reach Park site 41 times during the breeding season and 5 times during the nonbreeding season. We visited the Spittal Pond site 44 times during the breeding season and 7 times during the nonbreeding season. While at a site, we recorded each male at the site in a random order during a separate 15-minute recording session throughout the morning.
Upon arriving at a subject's territory, we searched for him for ≤ 15 min. If we found him, we waited 2 min before commencing recording. If we did not see or hear the ..., The R language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.,