When behavioral ecologist Liz Derryberry saw a news report of coyotes crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in March, she immediately thought of her birds. For over a decade, Derryberry has studied the white-crowned sparrow and how urban noise has disrupted and degraded the species’ ability to communicate.

With most San Franciscans staying at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, she decided to seize an unprecedented opportunity to study how this small, scrappy songbird responded when human noises disappeared.

“I realized we gotta do this, and we gotta do this now,” she says.

By recording the species’ calls among the abandoned streets of the Bay Area in the following months, Derryberry and colleagues have revealed that the