Some seabirds don’t simply survive storms. They journey them.
Streaked shearwaters nesting on islands off Japan typically head straight towards passing typhoons, the place they fly close to the attention of the storm for hours at a time, researchers report within the Oct. 11 Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences. This unusual conduct — not reported in another chicken species — would possibly assist streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) survive robust storms.
Birds and different animals residing in areas with hurricanes and typhoons have adopted methods to climate these lethal storms (SN: 10/2/15). In recent times, a number of research utilizing GPS trackers have revealed that some ocean-dwelling birds — such because the frigatebird (Fregata minor) — will take large detours to keep away from cyclones.
That is an comprehensible technique for birds that spend most of their time at sea the place “there’s actually nowhere to cover,” says Emily Shepard, a conduct ecologist at Swansea College in Wales. To search out out whether or not shearwaters additionally keep away from storms, she and her colleagues used 11 years of monitoring knowledge from GPS locators hooked up to the wings of 75 birds nesting on Awashima Island in Japan.
By combining this info with knowledge on wind speeds throughout typhoons, the researchers found that shearwaters that have been caught out within the open ocean when a storm blew in would journey tailwinds across the edges of the storm. Nonetheless, others that discovered themselves sandwiched between land and the attention of a powerful cyclone would typically veer off their standard flight patterns and head towards the middle of the storm.
Of the 75 monitored shearwaters, 13 flew to inside 60 kilometers of the attention — an space Shepherd calls the “eye socket,” the place the winds have been strongest — for as much as eight hours, monitoring the cyclone because it headed northward. “It was a kind of moments the place we couldn’t imagine what we have been seeing,” Shepard says. “We had a number of predictions for a way they may behave, however this was not one in every of them.”
The shearwaters have been extra prone to head for the attention throughout stronger storms, hovering on winds as swift as 75 kilometers per hour. This recommend that the birds is perhaps following the attention to keep away from being blown inland, the place they threat crashing onto land or being hit by flying particles, Shepard says.
Whereas that is the primary time this conduct has been noticed in any chicken species, flying with the winds might be a typical tactic for preserving power throughout cyclones, says Andrew Farnsworth, an ornithologist at Cornell College who was not concerned within the research. “It might sound counterintuitive,” he says. “However from the attitude of chicken conduct, it makes numerous sense.”
