[1] Unlike onomatopoeia, where nonsense words are created to sound like a bird's call, warblish uses real lexical items in a language to represent birdsong.
The meaning of the words often relates to the bird species in some way, either referring to its behavior, ecosystem role, mythology, or other cultural associations.
Some examples of English warblish given by Sarvasy include: Northern waterthrush: Nice old ladies don't chew tobacco California quail: Chicago!
While warblish functions partly as mimicry of birdsong, features like rhythm, pitch, and timing may be more important for accuracy than the specific words used.
While warblish might seem trival, it has been suggested to have nontrival functions.Warblish seems at first to be a trivial phenomenon, a clownish verbal play between children or whimsical adults calling out cheeeeeseburger or whip poor will to the birds.