How a Flock of Birds Can Fly and Move Together. Photo Richard Barnes. A dark flock of dunlins sprints straight over a marshuntil a merlin appears and they all veer at the same moment, flashing their bright white underparts and rearranging their group into an hourglass shape with shocking swiftness. MeaningOfBlackBirds.jpg.pagespeed.ic.GLKC8YovCG.jpg' alt='When Black Birds Fly Watch Online' title='When Black Birds Fly Watch Online' />A distant murmuration of starlingsand yes, that really is the marvelous term for a group of these often maligned birds1. Richard Wilbur wrote, smudging the dusk horizon with the quickness of a pulsating jellyfish. How do you play Angry Birds Rio The hit game, Angry Birds, has a sequel Angry Birds Rio. Its played like the original game pull the sling shot back, and watch the. Across North America, the estimated number of migrating birds killed annually in collisions with buildings ranges from 100 million to 1 billion birds. FLAP is an. Since primeval times people have looked at masses of birds moving as one and wondered how they do it. The ancient Romans had their explanation Gods, they believed, hinted at their intentions in the way birds flew. Scientists of the early 2. It is transfused thought, thought transferencecollective thinking practically. What else can it be mused one British naturalist, rather plaintively, in 1. See this articles accompanying photo gallery. Get the latest science news and technology news, read tech reviews and more at ABC News. Watch free horror movies online at FrightPix. Watch scary full length feature films, legally, streaming online at FrightPix. Many birds flock, of course. But only a relative handful really fly together, creating what University of Rhode Island biologist Frank Heppner, in the 1. Pelicans, geese, and other waterfowl form lines and Vs, presumably to take advantage of aerodynamic factors that save energy. But the most impressive flockers are arguably those that form large, irregularly shaped masses, such as starlings, shorebirds, and blackbirds. They often fly at speeds of 4. Yet they can make astonishingly sharp turns that appear, to the unaided eye, to be conducted entirely in unison. Imagine doing unrehearsed evasive maneuvers in concert with all the other fast moving drivers around you on an expressway, and you get an idea of the difficulty involved. No wonder observers have been left groping for an explanation. When Heppner, now semi retired, began studying pigeon flocks more than 3. The fact that we werent hooted out of town is an indication of how desperate we were to explain this stuff, he says now. Today, though, technological innovations, from high speed photography to computer simulations, have enabled biologists to view and analyze bird flocks as never before. So has a new wave of interest from other scientists, including mathematicians, physicists, even economists. As a result, researchers are closer than ever to really getting inside the mind of the flock. Theres a lot we dont know now, says Heppner, but I think were actually going to know how and why birds fly in organized groups within five years. On one level it has long been obvious whats going on when animals synchronize their movementsbe they ducks, wildebeest, herring, or social insects. When Black Birds Fly Watch Online' title='When Black Birds Fly Watch Online' />More eyes and ears mean increased opportunities to find food and improved chances of detecting a predator in time. Its when a predator lunges, though, that being in a crowd really pays off. Numerous studies have shown that individuals that travel in groups are almost always more vulnerable when they stray off by themselves. Thats due in no small part to the bewildering things that an assemblage can do. By turning rapidly or simply tilting a bit on their axis, dunlins are able to shift the appearance of their plumage from dark their upperparts to light their underparts, creating a swift flashing effect that might startle or confuse predators. Studies have shown that merlins hunting shorebirds are in fact most successful when theyre pursuing individuals. Falcons do go after tightly packed crowds of dunlins and other shorebirds, but those hunts are most likely to succeed when the attack causes a solo bird to stray. Safety in numbers, in other words Birds that stay together tend to survive together. Being single is always more risky, says Claudio Carere, an Italian ornithologist who is involved in a collaborative study of flocking starlings in Rome. The British evolutionary biologist William Hamilton, in 1. Each member of a flock, he wrote, acts out of simple self interest. When a predator approaches a flock, all the individuals in the group move toward the safest placenamely, the middle of the groupin order to reduce the chances of being captured. Observations of juvenile shorebirds have hinted that it may take them a while to get the hang of this, because they learn to form cohesive congregations only over time. As they do, natural selection dictates that the birds least able to hang with the group are most likely to be caught by predators. Self interest by itself may explain many of the observed dynamics of flock motion, such as density. But it cant explain how the birds get the information they need to move in synchrony and avoid a predator. Theres no way every member of the group can see a fast flying falcon at the same time. How, then, can they possibly know what direction to move in to avoid it One clue came from studies of fish. Many schooling species maneuver as intricately as the most cohesive bird flocksand theyre much easier to study, because they can be watched and photographed from above in open tanks. In the 1. 96. 0s a Russian biologist, Dmitrii Radakov, tested schools and found that they can successfully avoid predators, as a whole, if each fish simply coordinates its movements with those of its neighbors. Even if only a handful of individuals know where a predator is coming from, he wrote, they can guide a huge school by initiating a turn that their neighbors emulateand their neighbors neighbors, and so on. Unlike linear flocks of geese, which do have a clear leader, clusters are democratic. Film Noir Download The Lion Of Judah here. They function from the grassroots any member can initiate a movement that others will follow. Refining Radakovs theory had to wait until the 1. It turns out that only three simple rules suffice to form tightly cohesive groups. Each animal needs to avoid colliding with its immediate neighbors, to be generally attracted to others of its kind, and to move in the same direction as the rest of the group. Plug those three characteristics into a computer model, and you can create virtual swarms of any sorts of creatures you like. They change density, alter their shape, and turn on a dimejust as real world birds do. The makers of movies, from The Lion King to Finding Nemo, have used similar software to depict realistic looking movements in large groupswhether stampeding wildebeest or drifting jellyfish. The real world, though, doesnt run like software. One problem with the basic model is that it doesnt adequately explain how bird flocks can react as quickly as they do. Thats something Wayne Potts realized as a graduate student in the late 1. Now a biologist at the University of Utah, Potts ended up studying dunlins on Puget Sound. By making movies of their flocks and analyzing, frame by frame, how each individual bird moved, he was able to show that a turn ripples through a flock just as a cheerleading wave passes through sports fans at a stadium. He explained the finding with the name of his theory the chorus line hypothesis. An individual dancer who waits for her immediate neighbor to move before initiating her kick will be too slow similarly, a dunlin watches a number of birds around it, not just its nearest neighbors, for cues. This finding put to rest the old telepathy idea. The wave was propagating through the flock at least three times faster than could be explained if they were just watching their immediate neighbors, says Potts. But there was probably nothing extrasensory going on. Every year flocks of many thousands of starlings winter at large roosts in Rome. Smearing the dimming sky each afternoon, just before dusk, they fly in from the rural olive groves where they feedfaithful commuters in reverse, as Rachel Carson once wrote about birds predictable habits. Thousands coalesce and form dense spheres, ellipses, columns, and undulating lines, sequentially changing the shape of their flocks within moments. They exasperate many residents, who tire of the droppings they leave behind.