“Ya talkin’ to me?” City dwellers are known for their in-your-face attitudes—something that holds equally true for humans and birds, researchers report. During a multi-year study, published recently in the journal Behavioral Ecology, researchers from Virginia Tech played taped song recordings of unfamiliar male Song Sparrows to breeding male Song Sparrows in contrasting environments in southwestern Virginia. Their finding: Birds in crowded towns respond much more aggressively to the “intrusion” than those in parks and on farms. The urban birds spent more time zooming at, and perching right next to the audio speakers than their country counterparts. (Hello, road ragers, sound familiar?) “It fits in with what we see in humans these days,” says study co-author Ignacio T. Moore, a professor of biological sciences at Virginia Tech. But motivation for aggression is the key difference between humans and birds. Raised tempers in cities can stem from the crowds, along...