Sleeping Birds

It takes birds more than a day to migrate from one place to another. Besides having a great sense of direction, they need to rest. Some birds land. We’ve all had encounters with flocks of geese, honk honk honk, looking for a good place to spend the night (often some farmer’s recently seeded field). But there are birds who go non-stop - And you thought New York to Sydney was a long flight.

Several species have been identified as sleep-flyers; Frigatebirds, Albatrosses (get your neck out of the way!), the common Swift - which doesn’t seem so common if they can fly while asleep.

An Albatross. Photo by Pixabay

They have a clever brain that uses something called Unihemispheric sleep. One side of their brain sleeps while the other side controls flight and navigation. I can barely find my way to the grocery store sometimes using both sides of my brain, so I’m impressed.

When both sides of their brain DO fall asleep at the same time, it’s generally just a few seconds. Good thing, or there would be crashing sleep deprived birds everywhere.

The unihemispheric sleep doesn’t just work for migration. Some migratory birds like ducks have been known to sleep (on the ground or floating in the water) with just one side of their brain. No predator is going to get them!

This is kind of like us sleeping with “one eye open.” Except I’ll bet they don’t wake up all discombobulated and exhausted.

Animals have cool super powers. This is definitely one of them.