5/26/2023 0 Comments Names of flocks of birds![]() Want more about flocking birds? Read this article from Audubon. Potts called this the chorus-line hypothesis for bird movement. Red-winged blackbirds at sunset via Wikipedia.īottom line: According to Wayne Potts, a zoologist who published in the journal Nature in 1984, birds in flocks are able to change direction quickly not just because they are following a leader, or their neighbors, but because they see a movement far down the line and anticipate what to do next. Individual birds, those who are separated from the flock, are more likely to be picked off by predators. That makes sense, since flocking among birds serves the purpose of protecting birds from predators (although there are other purposes as well for example, when one bird finds food, others in a flock eat, too). He found that the flock typically responded only to birds that banked into the flock, rather than away from it. Potts used high-speed film – and a frame-by-frame analysis – of flocks of red-backed sandpipers (Calidris alpina) to conduct his study. These propagation speeds appear to be achieved in much the same way as they are in a human chorus line: individuals observe the approaching maneuver wave and time their own execution to coincide with its arrival. That is, he said, birds are like dancers who see an approaching leg kick when it’s still down the line, and anticipate what to do. The Flock (sometimes called the Angry Birds in older media) is the name for the core group of birds in the Angry Birds series. The result is collective decision making so agile that a signal to turn, usually initiated by a bird on the outskirts, can flash through a flock of 400 birds in half a seconda speed of 90 miles. Potts called this ability among flocking birds the chorus line hypothesis. The propagation of this maneuver wave, as he called it, begins relatively slowly but can reach speeds three times faster than would be possible if birds were simply reacting to their immediate neighbors. | Red-winged blackbirds over Mattamuskeet Lake in Hyde County, North Carolina, from EarthSky Facebook friend Guy Livesay. 'They have either been working on a poultry farm and involved in culling flocks or had contact with backyard flocks,' Pebody said. ![]() Instead, they anticipate sudden changes in the flock’s direction of motion.Īnd he said, once a change in direction begins in the flock, it then “spreads through the flock in a wave.” View larger. All the people who tested positive for the new avian flu lineage had had close contact with wild birds, said Richard Pebody, head of the High-threat Pathogen Team at WHO/Europe (World Health Organization). His work showed that bird in flocks don’t just follow a leader, or their neighbors. The classic research on how flocking birds move in unison comes from zoologist Wayne Potts, who published in the journal Nature in 1984. If they were, the reaction time of each bird would need to be very fast – faster than birds actually do react, according to scientists who have studied the reaction times of individual birds in laboratory settings. How do they do this? Zoologists say they aren’t simply following a leader, or their neighbors. We’ve all seen flocks of birds wheeling and swooping in unison, as if choreographed.
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