Abstract
And Summary: The response to playback of three different dialects by 10 territorial male corn buntings was investigated; the dialects played were own dialect, the dialect of a neighbouring population (NEAR) and a dialect from 40 km away (FAR). A significant effect of dialects was found for two measures of response, latency and singing rate. Response strength varies in the pattern OWN > NEAR > FAR for these measures. This pattern of response would not maintain the observed homogeneity of dialect populations. The results are similar to those obtained by experiments on other dialect species.