U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Jon Hagstrum believes birds may navigate home in migration by using Earth’s “low-frequency sound waves to identify the ‘address’ of home.”
How would that work?
“They are imprinting on the characteristic sound” of where they live, he told a crowd this week at a lecture at USGS headquarters in Menlo Park. “The terrain has characteristic frequencies. I think that is the sound they are listening to.”
Birds may even perceive the world as a vast sonic environment, hearing many frequencies bouncing off different landmarks, such as mountains and buildings, generated by the Earth’s movement.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
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This seems counter intuitive to me. With the rapidly increasing noise, and rapid changes in the background noise wouldn’t there be much more disruption in the migrations of birds today?
I use to raise homing pigeons and read a lot about their navigation methods, everything from using magnetic poles to star gazing. It should be sensible that birds and indeed any animal, including ourselves, would use every possible sense to find its way home. Sights, sounds, smells, whatever is familiar will help orient it. If one sense is diminished it would go with the others. As we know, some of these senses are amazingly acute in animals.