What Were the Birds Hearing?

I got a call from a fellow nature hound, excitedly telling me about an incident she was lucky enough to witness. We're pretty sure it's very common in the bird world, but easy to go unnoticed if one just assumes birds eat and fly and that's that.

She said she was watching blue jays, juncos, chickadees and nuthatches on feeders and limbs and on the ground, nibbling away and chattering like they do on any winter day. Until, in synch, they all stopped in their tracks and stood motionless.

For 15 minutes, with the exception of an occasional head turn.

Then, again in unison, they all resumed feeding and flying about.

It doesn't seem like critters to stop feeding without a darn good reason, and there were no predators about (if so, they'd fly up and away, yes?).

One thought was perhaps an earthquake. If any were nearby, they hadn't been registered yet. But I DID see, here http://earthquaketrack.com/p/united-states/new-hampshire/recent that Laconia, NH (about 40 miles from where she was) just last night had a 1.7 earthquake. "Maybe they were all sensing an aftershock from that?" (the same site listed back in December there was a 2.1 in Exeter, NH, and a lesser one in Laconia 12 days later).

We chatted about dogs we knew that were afraid of thunderstorms, hiding in the closet an hour before the arrival of one (or, in one extreme case, same fearful dog went out into the deluge not in bravery but in panic, to dig a hole in the dirt floor of the barn, only to learn a microburst had been occurring twenty miles away).

Today, though, my friend was wise to also note the weather and barometer. "The pressure had dropped and it was snowing an hour later". This made a bit more sense. It called to mind that we've heard robins in the warm seasons using a different alert-type song to warn of shifting weather, as if to tell their buddies, "Finish your forages and get to shelter!", followed by the same call ten minutes before the passing of a cloudburst to bring a message of "All is clearing, back to the bugs!"

It wouldn't surprise us if her birds today had heard the distant calls of their friends alerting the approach of precip, and maybe groups in other directions alerting the passage of it, so they might know where the approach is relative to their positions, to decide best on sheltering or checking out another feeding station.

I always appreciated the robins' insights so I could adapt my day to the weather. It's good to know we can have similar insights in the winter! They sure are a lot more reliable than any human I've heard!

Have a great one!

"Lark"