Female song in tinkebirds

Using a combination of colour-ringing individuals and identifying their sex genetically, we identified the sex of singing birds recorded along a transect across a hybrid zone between Yellow-fronted and Southern Red-fronted Tinkerbird in South Africa and Eswatini. We found that twenty singing individuals we recorded were females, but the relative proportion of colour-ringed females relocated singing was approximately a quarter compared to colour-ringed males. Furthermore, few females were found singing on more than one occasion and just one in multiple years. The function of female song in tinkerbirds still needs further investigation, but it could play a role as a deterrent against territorial intruders.