Can Wild Birds Predict the Weather?

Wild Bird Weather Vane

Meteorology is a tricky business. We've all been frustrated by the TV weather man for another dodgy forecast. But long before the MET Office or weather forecasters standing in front of a green screen or broadcasting over the radio, people relied on far less technological means to predict the impending weather. Quite often, this involved observing the behavior of animals and correlating that to the weather that would follow. Cows lying down? Must be a thunderstorm coming. Cats cleaning behind their ears? Might be rain on the way.

More relevant to our purposes, included in many of those observations were birds. For example, an old wives’ tale states that if birds feed during a storm, the rain will continue for a long time – but if they don’t, then the rain will end fairly quickly. But are our feathered weathermen any more reliable than a multi-million pound satellite? But perhaps more specifically, are they reliable at all?

Yes they are - and theses techniques have been around for a lot longer than than the space-age technology we use today.

Most birds have what’s called the Vitali organ, a special middle-ear receptor that can sense extremely small changes in atmospheric pressure. With extreme sensitivity comes equally acute pain reception, so the faster the atmospheric pressure falls (indicating an approaching storm), the more birds that fly low (and the lower they fly) to the ground in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort caused by the pressure change in their ears at higher altitudes. They don’t have to be flying to escape the pain either – if you notice a sudden and sharp increase in activity at your bird feeders or a massing on power lines, there’s probably a good chance that a storm is bearing down on your location. Conversely, if you notice that birds are flying high up in the sky, the weather is most likely clear.

The height at which birds are flying isn’t the only way you can use their actions to try and predict the weather. With a storm approaching, seagulls usually take a break from flying and seek refuge somewhere along the coast to wait the bad weather out. And all kinds of birds usually become very quiet right before it begins to rain.

So while birds may not be able to alert you to tomorrow’s temperature or if there’s going to be a frost overnight, they can still be useful and practical meteorological aids. But as for that old wives’ tale that you can determine the relative length of a period of rain by whether or not birds feed in a storm, there seems to be no hard evidence that either confirms or denies its premise.

Are you a farmer that relies on wild birds to help with your harvesting or crop sewing? Do your garden feeders get busy or quiet during different weather conditions? We'd love to hear from you if you've got a story or scientific evidence that you'd like to share with us.

www.wildbirdfood.uk.com sells high quality, low cost wild bird seed and feeders direct to the UK public from our website and our store in Deeping St James, Peterborough.