Nature & Environment

Birds can sense a tornado over 900km away

By T.K. Randall
December 20, 2014 ·  16 comments

A male golden-winged warbler. Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 Andy Reago Birds may actually be better at forecasting the weather than we are, that is according to a new bird migration study that has revealed the tendency for some species to fly the nest and head to a safer location just before the arrival of a hurricane.

Golden-winged warblers, which normally spend the winter in South America and then fly up to Tennessee to nest, were found to have abandoned the state and flown south again just one day before the arrival of a large storm that ended up killing 35 people."Meteorologists were predicting that the storm might come our way," said study lead author Henry Streby of the University of California, Berkeley. "But by the time they were saying they were sure it was coming, the birds had already figured it out and were gone."

It has been suggested that these tiny birds are actually able to pick up the low frequency sound waves of an approaching storm, something that is beyond the range of human hearing.

"They might be able to hear the storms coming and make a decision to leave and come back rather than hunker down and try to survive the tornadoes," said Streby.

Source: NBC News | Comments (16)

Tags: Tornado, Birds