Today is one of the heaviest travel days in the U.S. so I thought it an appropriate time to tell you that the roads may be congested overhead as well.  That’s because birds sometimes use them for navigation.

This is not a new discovery.  People who race pigeons had noticed that their birds seemed to follow roads – big roads – when racing home.  It wasn’t possible to prove this however until 2004 when GPS tracking technology got small enough to put on the back of a racing pigeon.

They tested the theory near Rome where they released racing pigeons 20-80 km from their lofts.  Researchers found that the experienced birds tended to follow roads and railroad tracks until they were relatively close to home.  If a bird had flown the route before it was much more likely to use a road as a guide.  Some birds even went out of their way to stay on the road and turn only at intersections.

Why do they do this?  Perhaps because it frees up their minds for focusing on other things.

And why do we prefer expressways?  Perhaps for the same reason … except that our minds are very busy today because the traffic is so bad.

For more information click here for the online article.

(photo by Alan D. Wilson www.naturespicsonline.com, in the public domain under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license at Wikimedia)