Bird asleep on the porch

Birds look quickly for a spot to roost as the sun goes down.

Imagine it’s your first time away from home; you are all alone in a new city, where do you go to find shelter? This is what happens to a lot of birds in late summer. Inexperienced birds have some inborn knowledge but there are also some things that have to be learned through trial and error. It’s not unusual to find birds early in the morning asleep on a feeder or maybe behind a nearby flower pot.

After juvenile finches become independent, they form large flocks that congregate at food sources. Scientist thought they also roosted together at night. However recent field work done by the Bird Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology revealed that wasn’t true.

Researchers attached radio transmitters to nine groups of House Finches in Ithaca, New York, to help locate the birds at their roosts. They found the birds didn’t have large permanent roosts. Their nighttime layovers were temporary and seemed to be located wherever a finch happened to be foraging at the time.

If you watch your feeders in the evening you'll notice that when the sun goes down, most birds find shelter quickly in nearby bushes, but one bird might decide the corner of the porch is a secure enough retreat.

Source: Where Finches Sleep http://goo.gl/QDC84

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