Frequency signatures: Red-knobbed Coot to Reindeer

Each card gives a species’ behavioural archetype, its frequency — how often it commits effort and how long each commitment lasts — and a waveform tracing that rhythm.

Frequency signatures

Each waveform traces one species’ working rhythm — where it spends effort, and where it waits. 2,327 species, A–Z; showing 1,729–1,752.

Red-knobbed Coot

MID

Lobed Feet Built for Fighting

Paddling • Patrolling • Raking

Continuous feeding and patrolling makes this a mid-frequency system.

Red-legged Honeycreeper

MID

Curved Bill and Brush Tongue

Probing • Frequent • Mobile

That makes it a mid-frequency system: a steady repeated rhythm of many small gains across a wide area.

Red-legged Seriema

MID

A Duet That Spaces the Grassland

Walking • Striking • Announcing

That makes it a mid-frequency system: steady ground-level hunting inside a territory maintained acoustically rather than by patrol.

Red-lipped Batfish

LOW

Walking Fins and a Lure

Propped • Shuffling • Luring

Almost no movement and long waits make this a single low-frequency system.

Red-necked Phalarope

MID

Spinning Up Prey, Leaving Males to Incubate

Spinning • Pecking • Surface-feeding

That makes it a bimodal system: rapid surface feeding and a slow, male-run incubation phase.

Red-necked Wallaby

MID

Joey Buffer Carry

Buffered • Rhythmic • Care-led

This creates a buffered, ongoing rhythm of foraging, resting and care, where a modest reserve of reproductive and energetic capacity is always held back for the next joey rather than spent all at once, making the wallaby a mid-frequency, rhythm-and-buffer system.

Red-shanked Douc

LOW

Chambered Gut Leaf Fermentation

Fermenting • Resting • Canopy

Because intake and processing both run slowly, it is a low-frequency system.

Red-sided Garter Snake

LOW

Thousands in One Limestone Pit

Denned • Massed • Cold

That makes it a bimodal system: extreme concentration at a fixed point and wide dispersal afterwards.

Red-spotted Guard Crab

MID

Reef Crevice Gatekeeper

Measured • Repeating • Patrol

This creates a mid-frequency system built on repeated, measured patrols around a fixed home rather than long stillness or all-or-nothing lunges.

Red-spotted Purple

LOW

One Species Wearing Two Warnings

Dark iridescent blue wings with no white band • Resembling the toxic pipevine swallowtail • Occurring where that model is common

The two defences also work on different timescales, the mimicry depending on a season of predator learning where the banded form acts within one encounter, which makes this a bimodal system.

Red-tailed Black Shark

MID

Attacking Whatever Looks Like It

Holding a territory around a cave, root or rock on the stream bed • Attacking intruders in proportion to how closely they resemble itself • Ignoring fish of different shape and habit that use other parts of the water

Because encounters recur, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

Red-tailed Hawk

LOW

Height-Advantage Scan

Perched • Soaring • Scanning

That makes the hawk a bimodal system: an extremely cheap elevated search state and a brief decisive descent.

Red-tailed Tinfoil Barb

MID

A Wall of Reflected Light

Flanks covered in guanine-crystal scales that reflect light almost like a mirror • Hundreds of fish shoaling and turning together so the reflections flash and shift constantly • A predator unable to hold a single target because the visual field is broken into moving points of light

Because turning is continuous, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

Red-tailed Tropicbird

MID

White-plume Ocean Line

Line • Holding • Cruise

The system therefore runs on a mid-frequency baseline of sustained line-holding flight punctuated by short, structurally important high-frequency bursts for plunges and escapes, making it a bimodal pattern.

Red-veined Darter

MID

Two Generations in One Summer

Arriving in spring from further south • Breeding immediately in warm shallow water • Producing adults from those eggs within about two months, which then breed again or move on

Since emergences and breeding recur within a season, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

Red-vented Bulbul

MID

Urban Patchwork Forager

Busy • Opportunistic • Patch-led

The result is a mid-frequency system: rhythmic, networked foraging across many small urban opportunities, with no separate high-burst or deep-reserve operating mode.

Red-winged Blackbird

MID

Marsh Perch Signal Platform

Perched • Broadcasting • Routine

This split between ongoing broadcast and triggered escalation makes the Red-winged Blackbird a bimodal system, with a mid-frequency signaling baseline and a high-frequency warning-and-confrontation mode layered on top.

Redclaw Crayfish

MID

Young That Hatch Fully Formed

Carrying eggs beneath the tail • Hatching young already formed • Releasing juveniles straight into the burrow

Since brooding cycles repeat within a season, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

Redwing

MID

Migrating by Contact Call

Flying through the night over unlit country • Giving a thin high seep call repeatedly • Keeping a loose flock together by sound alone

Since calls recur through the night, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

Reef Manta Ray

MID

Open-Mouthed Filter Wings and Cleaning Stops

Filter-feeding • Looping • Aggregating

Because the system alternates between active feeding and slow, site-faithful cleaning visits, it is bimodal.

Reef Stonefish

LOW

Seafloor Ambush Battery

Camouflaged • Anchored • Waiting

The system is built on long, low-expenditure stillness punctuated by very brief, contact-triggered bursts, so it operates as a bimodal pattern with a dominant low-frequency waiting mode and a sharp high-frequency response mode.