Fun with Science Club®


			Smart birds make smart foraging decisions. Beth Tyler 06.08.01 Birds foraging for food can either fly to the food or walk. Flying takes more energy than walking, but it is also more rewarding, meaning the bird more often gets good food. How do birds chose whether to forage by flying or walking? To experimentally find out, some scientists in England caught four starlings (birds in the genus Sturnus) in the wild. They kept them in an aviary, a room for birds, for several days. In the aviary, they offered the bird food at different distances away. Depending on the distance to the food, sometimes the bird would fly and sometimes the bird would walk to it. The scientists recorded the distance to the food, whether the bird walked or flied to it, and the time it took the bird to get to it. After collecting and analyzing all their data, the scientists concluded that birds make foraging decisions in order to get the most energy from food for the least amount of energy spent walking or flying in the least amount of time. In other words, birds are very smart foragers.


			Bautista, Luis M., Joost Tinbergen, and Alejandro Kacelnik. 2001. To walk or to fly? How birds choose among foraging modes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98(3): 1089- 1094.