Brooklyn Bird Watch: Where Do The Birds Go?

As a kid living in the country, I often wondered where the birds went during a prolonged downpour. Much later, especially after spending a lot of time in Florida where there are destructive hurricanes, I wondered not only where they went, but also how did such a small, lightweight creature so exposed to the elements survived such violent attacks from the weather.

The answers are varied because, just like us, different birds do different things and go to different places during a hurricane.

If you are a bird and living within the reach of the hurricane’s wide sweep of wind circling at devastating speeds of 140 mph, since you can fly, perhaps the favorite place to be would be above the storm. 

Of course, very few birds are capable of doing that, and yet, there are a few birds that actually can.

Some shorebirds are known to use the hurricane winds to their advantage to escape. Some have been found as far as 150 miles inland after a major hurricane.

The Frigatebirds and Eagles are able to “soar above the storm” as they say.  Some birds, as difficult as it might be to imagine, fly through the storm and some of those birds don’t make it. The Eagle, for example, “uses the strong winds and updrafts to their advantage, allowing them to fly higher and further than most other birds.” 

So while the Eagles and the Frigatebirds soar high above the storm, the smaller birds, shorebirds and “neighborhood birds” as I like to call them, have unique solutions when dealing with hurricanes.

Picturing the vulnerability of the smaller birds if they got caught out in a violent storm, calls to mind that 1990s country love song, “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane” by Country Music Hall of Fame singer Tanya Tucker.

Luckily for them, and for us, as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology explains, birds have instincts that allow them to sense an approaching storm by detecting changes in air pressure, serving as a “built-in barometer.” These unique creatures can also detect other environmental cues such as shifts in the wind direction, temperature and humidity, each of which allows them to take action before the storm arrives.

I was in Florida recently during a major hurricane and watched small groups of sparrows appear to become nervous, flying around the building and the courtyard in circles, disappearing into the bushes for a few moments and then suddenly reappearing before flying away again around the corner of the building.

These small birds were obviously spooked by something that could only be the approaching hurricane. I watch the news so I know when a hurricane is approaching, but birds don’t watch TV.  

A hurricane forms a low air pressure area around it that can be felt several hundred miles away. That’s good news for the birds because a hurricane can do a great deal of damage to a bird’s daily life.  It can destroy an active nest and flood the ground-level nesting of shorebirds. Hurricanes can disrupt food sources and even destroy habitats by knocking down trees, changing shorelines and flooding valleys. Even migration patterns can be impacted by a hurricane, forcing early or late travel and alternate routes.

So back to the original question: Where do birds go during a hurricane?

Perching birds (birds that roost on limbs) like Bluejays, Sparrows, Crows, Cardinals, and Mockingbirds usually find a strong limb on a tree and sit through the storm near the trunk on the other side of the tree from the wind and rain direction.

A lot of people may not know that when songbirds relax their feet automatically grasp so they can sleep while tightly holding on to the branch.

Some of these birds will seek shelter under branches, and in cavities.  Pelicans try to stay put near their nesting sites and take cover behind barrier islands. Some birds fly to densely vegetated areas inland, safe from the storm surge, heavy rains and strong winds.

Fossils tell scientists and the scientists tell us that birds have been around for approximately 150 million years. (That’s a long time.) The environment, that is, the climate, has been around even longer than that.  For all we know, for a bird, surviving a hurricane may be no big deal, but one thing is for sure, as mankind moves forward through time and our relationship with the environment becomes more and more co-dependent, perhaps we will have to become more than even now, like the birds —  masters of survival.