The Life of a Bird

This blog is called Journals of a Naturalist, but I must admit that I am especially partial to birds. There may be a few reasons for this partiality. For one, birds are everywhere and they like to let you know it by flashing their bright feathers and letting out distinctive calls. Another reason may be that the common names of birds are widely accepted by most people who know them. Most field guides use the same names for the birds whereas a plant may have two or three common names and no-one can seem to agree on which one is correct. Yet another reason for my affinity for the birds may have nothing to do with their ease of access or identifiability at all, but with the freedoms that birds enjoy due to their amazing power of flight.

Think about the life of a bird with me for a minute. They hatch from an egg, a lot of the time blind and defenseless from all of the dangers of the world. These young hatchlings must trust that every time they feel a vibration at their nest it is a parent of theirs bringing food for them because they can’t provide it on their own. Once their eyes open, it can be a couple of weeks before they develop enough feathers to even begin to think about flying about. This means that they are still trapped in that nest, still defenseless.

Once feathers do grow, the young nestlings may begin to fledge (leave the nest through short flights). Even so, they still typically haven’t yet developed all of their flight feathers yet so their flights are short, and they must still rely on a parent to provide them with food. Then, one day, all of their feathers emerge and their muscles develop due to their short practice flights. It’s not long after that these birds must make a journey. These young birds must go from flying only a few feet or yards from the nest where they were once blind and defenseless to completing a flight of thousands of miles.

Now, I know that some birds hatch precocial (having sight and feathers at hatching) and some species don’t migrate thousands of miles, but for those that do they must grow up fast. There are even more hardships on these long migration journeys that they now must make. If their feathers or muscles haven’t developed properly, they may never make it to their destination. If they fly into a storm, or can’t seem to find enough food to keep up with the high energy demands of flight, again, they may never make it to their destination.

Once they do make it to their non-breeding grounds the hardships don’t end. These birds must then survive another few months before molting their feathers and making the journey all over again, this time in the opposite direction. Now they must hope that they selected a good breeding ground with plenty of food, shelter, and mate selection or else they may miss their opportunity to contribute to the success of their species. Then the cycle begins again for a new generation.

The cycle that I’ve laid out may seem fairly set and like there isn’t much room for error, but the fact remains that these birds have freedom to make a decision on where to be and when. Now I know that birds don’t decide that they have places in the world that they want to visit and so that’s where they decide to go, and I know that a lot of what is driving their decision making is purely biological. But imagine if you had the power of flight and the freedom that came with it. Along with the free will decision making that comes along with a human brain, the possibilities would be endless.

This is a slightly romanticized way of thinking about birds and not at all a view based in science, but I believe that thinking about all of the places that I could go as a bird are just another draw for my love of this particular class of animals. It is just another factor that drives me to try and learn more about them and try to truly understand them. It would be nice to one day find out that these birds do have some free will and they have chosen to spend their time in my backyard, singing to me.