About the Author(s)

Robert B. Payne completed his B.S. at the University of Michigan in 1960 and his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1965. He worked with brood parasitic birds in Africa for two years supported by a NSF postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cape Town, where he became interested in small blue birds, the brood parasitic indigobirds (Vidua spp.), and their songs. Soon afterwards, he began a study of the relationship between songs and breeding success in Indigo Buntings in his native Michigan. He now maintains two color-banded populations of Indigo Buntings in southern Michigan to observe the long-term changes in their song traditions. He also has worked in Australia with songs of the Indigo Fairy-wren Malurus splendens, a small, blue, cooperatively-breeding bird. Currently he is Curator of Birds at the Museum of Zoology and Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Address: Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Email: rbpayne@umich.edu .