Birds of a feather flock together – even when they’re not going where scientists expect them to.
New research from the University of Guelph suggests that while birds know which direction they’re supposed to fly in, it may have little to do with their current location or future destination.
To test that out, Guelph researchers picked up dozens of white-throated sparrows at Long Point Provincial Park.
They then operated on some of the birds, to remove their magnetic sense or sense of smell – theoretically making it harder for them to navigate.
A total of 50 birds – some who had undergone surgery and some who had not – were then taken onto an airplane bound for Saskatchewan, where they were released into the wild and radio equipment was used to track their whereabouts.
The researchers expected the sparrows to return to Ontario. Instead, almost all of them – even the ones that had not been operated on – headed north.
Had they still been in Ontario, that route would have tracked with their normal migratory patterns. In Saskatchewan, it brought them to new territory.
“These birds have a compass, but they don’t have a map,” Guelph integrative biology professor Ryan Norris said in a news release.
In total, 34 of the 50 birds headed north. One stayed near the release site, while six were late found dead. The researchers were unable to track the movements of the remaining nine sparrows.”
According to Norris, the results show that the birds “may not be true navigators.” It’s also possible that they were confused by the boreal forest in northern Saskatchewan, which they may have mistaken for the more familiar forests of northern Ontario.
More information is available in the full study, which was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
