Budgies, it seems, have a favourite flying direction and individual birds have a preferred direction to turn when they navigate an obstacle.
Research conducted by The University of Queensland's, Queensland Brain Institute and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Vision Science shows budgerigars have a built-in bias when flying to avoid an obstruction.
Study lead author Dr Partha Bhagavatula said the findings explain how birds manage to fly in flocks without colliding.
“By having a natural mechanism where populations of birds are predisposed to choosing different flight paths around obstacles, an entire flock could avoid situations where they block each other, slow down, lose time and expend more energy”, he said.
Project leader Professor Mandyam Srinivasan said the study was prompted by the ability of birds to navigate through environments with narrow gaps, such as dense bush, without collisions.
“You cannot help but wonder how they do this so quickly without banging into branches”, he said.
“We wondered if they have any rules when they decided what route to take”.
To conduct the researcher five budgerigars were flown down a tunnel with obstacles to navigate.
Professor Srinivasan said even with only five birds, there was a noticeable variation from bird to bird.
“Some birds had a clear left bias, other birds had a clear right bias”, he said.
Professor Srinivasan said most bird flight research is focused on migration, so little is known about moment to moment guidance of flight.