"Harmonics" here isn't referring to the harmonic complexity of songs.
It's referring to harmonics as in overtones, the complexity of the overtones -- the timbre.
It's the voice of the bird, not the songs it sings.
"Harmonics" here isn't referring to the harmonic complexity of songs.
It's referring to harmonics as in overtones, the complexity of the overtones -- the timbre.
It's the voice of the bird, not the songs it sings.
I agree that the point TFA is suggesting seems to be about the spectral complexity at any given moment in song - what you might call the timbre - and how nearly pure the tones in their spectrograms are. (They don't specify what species they're showing. Looks like several, but I can't ID them by eye.)
My point is that no, in fact, many bird species produce vocalizations that are indeed spectrally complex (beyond even just harmonic stacks) from moment-to-moment.
Take a look at song from a blue jay (https://www.remoteenvironmentalassessmentlaboratory.com/expl... ; not the best example, or one I produced, but an easy one to hand), particularly the syllables near the end of the clip. That's an example of a complex timbre.
And lots of species produce song and calls with features like this.