Unusual research request

[tristgo]

Hi,

I research and teach the unusual subject of 'natural navigation', ie. using nature to find your way - including sun, moon, stars, plants, animals. I am also the author of a book on the subject - The Natural Navigator.

A question I get asked a lot is whether birds can be used by humans to help navigate when on land. My examples in this area are extremely limited. I know lots about their use by seafarers, both their diurnal and annual patterns that indicate both migratory routes and the proximity of land for nautical navigators.

Question Time: What I am wondering is if anyone can offer any examples of how birds can give clues to your location or the direction of another location when you are on dry land?

Any examples greatly appreciated and sources will be credited, if desired, if used in future books etc.

Many thanks,

Tristan

[thebeard]

i suppose water birds, especially during migraition, such as waders and geese, will be heading towards water, could help when you're thirsty and lost! migrating birds could help at certain times of the year as they will be heading a particular direction (or at least should be!)

[RKB]

Originally Posted by thebeard

i suppose water birds, especially during migraition, such as waders and geese, will be heading towards water, could help when you're thirsty and lost! migrating birds could help at certain times of the year as they will be heading a particular direction (or at least should be!)

But the water they're heading to might be 500 miles away, and they're ignoring the other bodies of water on the way. It might also be the coast.

Birds do not move in preditable directions on a local scale (i.e. one where you could use it by looking up at them), because they have lots of priorities. They might be flying to a roost site, a nest site, a feeding site, or be avoiding bad weather, and you have no idea of how far they are intending to travel or where they've come from. Unless you know the origin and the destination on a scale relevant to you, then it's useless.

For example, swifts can fly several hundred km on feeding forays - the swifts nesting in London often pop over to Holland and France for the day. Godwits commute between Ireland, Britain and Holland on feeding trips. Some birds use sites simply because they are 'traditonal' and they were shown by their parents, even though other apparenrtly suitabkle sites lie all around (e.g. swans and geese). Even migrating birds get funelled by the landscape, so swallows heading for Africa in autumn might not go south, but instead go west on a local scale to avoid a geographical feature.

So I don't think that you can use birds for navigation except in a very general sense of north-south migration (even though this is on the scale of several thousands of km, so not something that you can use on the ground).

[Gill Catton]

I think rooks use traditional flying routes to and from rookerys roost sites and feeding grounds (apparently they even use the same routes for decades and decades), so I suppose you could follow them back to a certain copse maybe, though obviously you equally may not be actually able to follow them due to hedges and ditches that they don't have to deal with. Oh and at some unseen signal the rooks will stop using the breeding rookery and will only roost at a winter roost site, so I suppose you could use this as evidence of the seasons changing.

A barn owl with a vole in claw will head directly for its nest or youngsters which might lead you to a barn. However they may just lead you to a tree and actually you shouldn't be disturbing them while breeding anyway as they are protected!

You could come across sand martins which usually tells you that you are within 400m of water (and their nest colony).

Birds might not help you navigate brilliantly but they do help you read what's happening in your environment, they might indicate that there's a bird of prey around by the alarm call they are using, or that there's a weasel in the undergrowth by a different alarm call. The clatter of a flock of pigeons launching out of the trees tell you that a human might be coming your way.

A flock of dunlin vanishing off out of the estuary tells you the tide is still going out. Redshank stacking up on a certain rock tells you the tide is coming in, Gulls and cormorants show you where the fish are etc.....

[leon_heller]

I'd rather use my new Dell Streak tablet. It fits in my pocket, has GPS and an electronic compass, and gives me directions via speech synthesis.

We humans have a vestigial directional sense. It's probably magnetic, as is the case with many birds, although they also use the sun and moon, stars, landmarks and so on.

[RKB]

Originally Posted by Gill Catton

I think rooks use traditional flying routes to and from rookerys roost sites and feeding grounds (apparently they even use the same routes for decades and decades), so I suppose you could follow them back to a certain copse maybe, though obviously you equally may not be actually able to follow them due to hedges and ditches that they don't have to deal with. Oh and at some unseen signal the rooks will stop using the breeding rookery and will only roost at a winter roost site, so I suppose you could use this as evidence of the seasons changing.

A barn owl with a vole in claw will head directly for its nest or youngsters which might lead you to a barn. However they may just lead you to a tree and actually you shouldn't be disturbing them while breeding anyway as they are protected!

Problem with those is that you'd already need to have the detailed local knowledge to interpet where they are going and where they have been, so you wouldn't need them to navigate as you'd have a very precise idea of the landscape already.

Originally Posted by Gill Catton

A flock of dunlin vanishing off out of the estuary tells you the tide is still going out. Redshank stacking up on a certain rock tells you the tide is coming in,

But you don't need to look at the birds for that, just look at the water...

[SheffieldLass]

If you are trying to find the rubbish tip, follow the seagulls, though you might end up at the sewage works instead.

If you see gulls clustering and feeding around the end of a pipe offshore you know not to swim near there ......

If you hear house sparrows chirping you are probably close to human habitation.

[poppingjay]

Originally Posted by SheffieldLass

If you are trying to find the rubbish tip, follow the seagulls, though you might end up at the sewage works instead.

If you see gulls clustering and feeding around the end of a pipe offshore you know not to swim near there ......

If you hear house sparrows chirping you are probably close to human habitation.

Sound advice that, along with 'don't eat yellow snow'

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by RKB

Problem with those is that you'd already need to have the detailed local knowledge to interpet where they are going and where they have been, so you wouldn't need them to navigate as you'd have a very precise idea of the landscape already.



But you don't need to look at the birds for that, just look at the water...

I'm only trying to help, yes the value of reading birds as I have suggested this may be slight but it does exist. I have actually used the barn owl thing to find a barn (well actually I was looking for its nest site but its ultimately the same thing). Plus even if you vaguely know an area it is easy to become dis-orientated especially if visibility is poor and landscape fairly homogenous.


If you are in an area you don't know as I have frequently been in the past, it is often birds that have indicated too me that there is water nearby.

Also I have found looking at a tide it often still isnt clear if its coming in or going out or indeed if it is on the turn (unless I sit and watch it for a while) the birds are just an added extra clue. And actually even if I sit and watch its often not clear if the tide has started to turn and it has frequently been the birds that have indicated this for me.

[tristgo]

Thanks for all the input so far, much appreciated.

The tides are a fascinating one. It is easy, using the phase of the moon (full or new near springs, half near neaps) combined with high water indicators, like lichens, to work out how high or low the water will be at high or low tide, but much trickier to work out which way it is going when you arrive at the beach. On a shallow beach you can often see the water from a retreating tide making its way back to the sea, but it can be a hard one to call. I digress, back to the birds...!