songbirds

A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds. Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin oscen, 'songbird'.

Songbirds form one of the two major lineages of extant perching birds (~4,000 species), the other being the Tyranni (~1,000 species), which are most diverse in the Neotropics and absent from many parts of the world. The Tyranni have a simpler syrinx musculature, and while their vocalizations are often just as complex and striking as those of songbirds, they are altogether more mechanical sounding. There is a third perching bird lineage, the Acanthisitti of New Zealand, of which only two species remain alive today. Recent estimates indicate that songbirds originated 50 million years ago. The distribution of their basal lineages suggests that their origin and initial diversification occurred exclusively in the Australian continent; and only about 40 million years ago, oscines started to colonize Eurasia, Africa, and eventually the Americas.