Birds acting funny?

Since the tsunami's and hearing about the birds and animals acting funny, I have been watching the birds.

I live near New York and last night around 3 in the morning, I heard something I have never heard before - a lot of geese flying and with a lot of noise. It sounded like hundreds of them. The sound lasted about 4-5 minutes. I tried to see but it was too dark.

I believe geese sleep at at night and I have never heard this before. It was loud enough to wake me up which is hard to do.

Odd behavior?

Before seismic activity you will see strange patterns in bird behaviour, birds flying into windows, flying at cars and flying in formation the opposite way than they usually go.

I am not in your hemisphere so I would not be sure of the geese doing what they are supposed to do, were they flying south?

Terapin nailed it, migration. It's the time of the year.

They are noisy aren't they?

A few weeks ago my son noticed some birds here that we had never seen before. Sooooo, I looked them up. Turns out they were Cedar Waxwings. And from what I read about them, they don't belong here. They don't winter here, and they certainly don't summer here.

My only guess is that they were trying to follow the food, or had made their way here in front of a cold front that swept down out of Canada.

I haven't noticed any unusal behavior on the part of the birds that are normally here though. Plenty of breeding going on. My kids are learning alot.

Didn't the tsunami disturbed the earth rotations cylcle...

that might have affect the birds as well...I mean screwed up their migration schedule...or something...

We've had swarms of many different breeds of birds here in Mississippi in the last few days. They seem to be flyin in from the north. Guess that could also be migration as well. Just never seen this many breeds.

OK, thanks for the replies. I feel better with the above poster stating that geese sometimes do fly in the dark. I never have seen it personally, but then I again i have never watched birds until the tsunami.

Any one know more about what the birds were doing in the tsunami zone? Have birds acted funny before man-made disasters?

Thanks for your input. This should educate me and others to watch for certain signs that could be as an early warning.

I don't know if this would apply, but just yesterday, for the first time in my life, I saw a huge hawk "waddling" down a street in Bedford, TX. It looked sick to me, I was going to call the animal shelter, but it flew off clumsily. I used to live in bedford for upwards of 10 years, and have lived in the surrounding cities to it off and on for a few years now and I have never once seen a hawk touch down on a residential street (at least not one near a road as busy as Harwood).

Anyway, I have no idea if this has anything to do with spring migration, avian flu, or a change in the climate/environment... or if it was just one wierd isolated case of a sick hawk.

I have an odd bird story to add to the mix.

I live in an area frequently visited by small flocks of crows. I never saw them in groups larger than three previous to this one night about a month ago, give or take.

I was walking down the street in the dark, going to the store about a mile from my house, when I heard the most tremendous cacophony coming from the tree I had just passed. I thought it was a jetliner or a huge plastic bag, something whipping in the wind.

I turned and looked, saw nothing but the skeletal tree. The noise stopped. I looked a little closer and saw there were birds in the tree, not a few, but upwards of a hundred. Sure enough, they were crows. As soon as I realized what I was seeing, I sort of stood back with my hand on my hips, completely flabbergasted.

That's when they all took off, all at once, like a shotgun blast into the sky. It was the most incredible thing, easily a hundred crows taking to the air all at once. They made a hell of a racket, and did a lazy circle around the tree before settling down again.

When I got back from the store, they were gone, and I haven't seen them since. There's just this lone crow who sits on the power lines outside my window. So where did they all go? Did they die? Birds wouldn't have migrated mid-season, it doesn't make sense. This is their home pretty much all year round, but there have never been so many.

Then there was the case where a bunch, and I mean a BUNCH of homing pigeons all got lost at the same time. That was pretty freaky, because it never happens. They race them, and every year a few get lost, but last year or the year before, something like a third failed to reach their destination. That's unprecedented, at least in modern times.

City lights also disrupt bird feeding patterns. We have a lake and a park near us where there is a small flock of geese and ducks. As I was driving home at 10pm in January, I saw all of them out for a stroll, grazing in the grass and flapping their wings. They weren't alarmed... they were just feeding.

24 hour light means they can set their sleep cycles as they like.

Saw 2 golden eagles in metro Phoenix, 2 days ago.

Grackle is nesting in my cholla tree- where the cat can't get to it-

My cat is catching mice like crazy- watched her eat one yesterday.

Don't normally see crows either, but they have been fighting over neighborhood store debris this last week.

Seeing eagles is a trip no matter where you find them!

Owls off migration

This year, great gray owls have irrupted in the United States, sometimes straying thousands of miles far south and east of their normal range...Unlike song- or shorebirds, great gray owls don't usually migrate, so when they appear this far from home, something has likely gone awry.

Originally posted by Mayet
Before seismic activity you will see strange patterns in bird behaviour, birds flying into windows, flying at cars and flying in formation the opposite way than they usually go.

I am not in your hemisphere so I would not be sure of the geese doing what they are supposed to do, were they flying south?

Wow...and no more than 24 hours after this was posted there is a magnitude 8.7 earthquake in Indonesia