Birds Speaking a Foreign Language

The Associated Press reports that nuthatches can understand the language spoken by chickadees.

Apparently, chickadees use the number of “dee”s after their “chicka” to communicate that they have encountered a predator and to give other birds in the vicinity information about what kind of predator they have observed. When chickadee calls were played to trees full of nuthatches, the nuthatches reacted the same way that chickadees did.

It’s almost crazy enough to be an April Fool prank, but I already did one of those today.