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International audience; In birds, parente offspring recognition is crucial for directed parental care, and is often based on acousticcues. The strength and the time of onset of this recognition process depend on ecological factorsthat constrain parental care. For instance, parenteoffspring recognition generally appears earlier innidifugous than in nidicolous species. We investigated whether fledglings in a nidicolous species, thezebra finch, Taeniopygia guttata, recognize their parents and the fate of this recognition process once theparents had stopped their food provisioning. Zebra finches are gregarious passerines that provideparental care to chicks up to 20 days after fledging. In playback experiments, fledglings preferentiallyresponded to parental calls over other adult calls and thus recognized both their father’s and mother’sdistance calls. However, at 2 months, motivation to respond to parental and other adult calls became sexspecific, with sons no longer reacting preferentially to their father’s calls, whereas daughters did.This pattern may be linked to the development of sexual traits and mate-searching behaviours. Thepersistence of parent recognition at the age of pair formation may also be of critical importance duringmate choice.