Have you ever seen a flock of birds take off all at once?
This may be the reason they do it!
It’s quite a sight to watch hundreds, even thousands of birds simultaneously take flight. Around sunrise on winter mornings, Jackdaws that are found across Europe, North Africa, and western Asia, leave their roost all at once, creating large noisy masses in the sky.
People think they are noisy to start, but their squawking gets louder and louder as they suddenly take flight.
Recently when scientists were studying Jackdaws, they discovered the birds take a vote to decide when to take flight!
Researchers studied the bird’s vocalisations and discovered when a bird calls, it is casting a vote or signalling it wants to leave.
The birds seemed to agree on leaving as when the collective noise reached its highest intensity, most birds left when “voting” was at its loudest. The remaining birds left within an average of four seconds of each other.
Sometimes the birds failed to agree just like humans, so they depart in dribs and drabs. But it is better if they leave the roost all together as the more there are, the safer they are from predators. And by joining in with all the other jackdaws each bird get to find out the critical information like where to find food.
Jackdaws are members of the Corvidea (corvid) family which includes crows, ravens and in some countries magpies.
