If some behaviour is innate, other behaviour is learnt through various series of events that happen at critical times early in life, or later on and throughout.
Habituation
Habituation is a very primordial and simple learning mechanism that involves desensitisation to repetitive stimuli that are not rewarding nor harmful. Baby birds are habituated to the sound of falling leaves or birds of their own species, when they learn that they do not signal danger.
Being able to disregard the constant background noise in the environment and βfalse alarmsβ saves energy and allows focus on the real, relevant stimuli such as finding food, intra-species communication and detecting genuine…