The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

by Jennifer Ackerman

Just before it left a bivouac site, the bird would sing a loud song, probably directed at its mate, which acts as a “departure signal,” says Chaves-Campos. The other ocellated antbirds present at the site, eavesdropping on the signal, would depart, too, and travel silently through the rainforest, moving single-file directly to a new site, each bird separated by a few seconds like orderly kindergarteners on a city walk. No meandering in different directions, just a beeline from one site to the next, as if one or more of the birds in the group already knew the exact location. Which, it turns out, they do. In one instance, an antbird in a group traveled directly to a new nomadic ant colony that this particular bird had not itself inspected on the previous evening. Other group members had scoped it out while the ants were moving their nest overnight to a new location, one hundred meters away from the old one. In each of the three trips from site to site, all of the birds in the group traveled directly and arrived simultaneously, within ten seconds, at the new site. “This suggests that these birds do not wander looking for ant colonies,” says Chaves-Campos. “They know where to go, or at least one individual in each travel group knows the location of the colony. By following those who know, the antbirds discover ant colonies previously unknown to them.”