Educater Yourself About Birds and Their Flocking habits
Birds and their flocking habits
Most birds will mostly stay by them selves except for during the breeding season, but there are birds like the Red-winged Blackbirds and the American Crow which will congregate in large roosting flocks consisting of thousands and even in to millions of birds. Such large concentrations of birds have its advantages when it comes to protection against predators, but can have devastating consequences if the group attracts any kind of bird disease.
It is very important that birds create their own “individual distance”, especially when they are airborne, so no unnecessary collisions will occur. These personal spaces are also important when birds are feeding, to avoid fighting and disturbances amongst them. If you ever have watched birds like the starlings for example, they will space themselves out on the lawn when hunting for worms, so each bird can creep up on it undetected and undisturbed.
Personal spaces can be larger for some birds than others, and the size of a bird’s space is determined on the pecking order, and the circumstances surrounding each bird, but also the bird’s lifestyle. The only time their personal space is reduced is due to either breeding or huddling together for warmth during cold winter night in a roost.
There are groups like the Tree Swallows which normally are solitary that will sometimes group together, for example if there is an oncoming attack upon a nest they will quickly forms a group to aggressively defend it. The Tree Swallows are also quick to join up with flocks that are ready to start their migration journeys in the fall.
Now, there are many advantages for birds living in large flocks, and they can almost be viewed as a single organism that feeds, moves, and survives together. Some of the definite pluses are that a bird’s chance of coming under attack by a predator such as the falcons or hawks minimizes drastically, and large groups of birds are known to take flight seconds before single birds if a treat is nearby.
Another great advantage is when the flock disburses; it will confuse and deter predators as it will have a harder time to single out one particular bird. Living in large groups will also help in bringing more important feeding time for the birds, because now they can spend less time on looking out for danger. Finding food becomes economical as well, because once a few birds have found a great feeding area, other birds can stop looking and quickly join the already feeding birds.
Creating flocks are especially important for seabirds that will gather around schools of fish to feed on. Flocking is also very important during the winter season when food is scares and becomes hard to find, and many birds like nuthatches, creepers, chickadees, and titmice will gather around bird feeding stations. This will of course attract the for ever hunting hawks and falcons, and as we mentioned earlier, the large group of birds will disperse quickly and confuse their attacker.
Birds as we know also form flocks when they are ready to start their migration journey, and why they do so is not fully clear to us. It is not because of attacks from predators, because most migrations occur during the night. One explanation might be that juvenile birds learn from experienced birds called “pathfinders” the best traveling route, where these young birds might otherwise have a harder time finding their way and could even get lost. Some also think that it could be the “aerodynamic drag” that birds will experience during their migration. A group of birds flying together will have less of aerodynamic drag and save more precious energy, than a bird flying on its own.
