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  Besides our weekly "Ducks" and "Faux Ducks" features, I also have a backlog of bird photos by biologist John Avise. They are usually themed, and today's theme is "Sky-gazing." I've indented John's notes and IDs.
  Have you ever wondered why birds so often appear to stare at the sky with one eye? What I'm talking about is illustrated in the photos below, which depict more than a dozen avian species caught in the act of what I'll call "sky-gazing". All of these pictures were taken near my home in Southern California, and the last one even shows a bird
  sky-gazing while in flight.
  Why do birds so frequently sky-gaze?
  Here are several (non-exclusive) possibilities. Birds might sky-gaze to:
  (a) scan for aerial predators such as hawks;
  (b) scan for edible prey such as flying insects;
  (c) "check their watches" (i.e., monitor the time of day by noting the sun's position in the sky, given their latitude);
  (d) check for clouds or weather conditions;
  (e) scan for conspecifics, or competitors;
  (f) multiple or all of the above.
  Or maybe it's none of the above. For example, perhaps these photos illustrate nothing more than happenstantial head movements caught on camera. Maybe some of the birds are just daydreaming. Or, perhaps some of these birds are actually staring at the ground or water from their other eye. Who knows? What do you think? [I suspect the correct answer is (f), but really my favorite hypothesis is (c)].
  Hammonds Flycatcher (Empidonax hammondii):
  Harlequin Duck (Histrionicus histrionicus):
  Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus):
  Red-crowned Parrot (Amazona viridigenalis):
  Pacific Slope Flycatcher (Empidonax difficilis):
  White-throated Swift (Aeronautes saxatalis):
  This entry was written by whyevolutionistrue and posted on November 11, 2020 at 8:00 am and filed under birds, photography, Readers' wildlife, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.	Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 8:21 am | Permalink
  I have noticed birds at our feeders watching the sky while feeding. I've always assumed it was to keep watch for predators as our neighborhood is also home to many Cooper's hawks (Accipiter cooperii). It is not unusual to find half eaten bird and small mammal carcasses around. Some are roadkill scavenged by black vultures (Coragyps atratus), which are also very common in my area.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 2:18 pm | Permalink
  I've noticed that too. In addition, our birds scan the ground for marauding neighbourhood cats!
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 8:25 am | Permalink
  I've noticed this behavior many times while filming birds. The life of a bird is pretty stressful.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 8:45 am | Permalink
  Maybe they just think they look cool doing it. They do look pretty cool.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 9:01 am | Permalink
  Maybe they are questioning why humans act so stupid.
  Tell me some of those don't say to you: "Trump? Really?"
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 9:52 am | Permalink
  You know crows are certainly saying it. Hahaha!
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 8:46 am | Permalink
  Nice!! They look so adorable!
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 8:50 am | Permalink
  Do birds in cages exhibit this behaviour?
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 9:07 am | Permalink
  I'm not sure that would be a good test of the 'watching out for predator' hypothesis, since the gesture may be instinctive.
  What might be a better test is to see if apex birds of prey with hundreds of generations of evolution as apex predators still do it. If they do, then that might be evidence against 'watching for predators' being the main driving force behind the instinct.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 10:46 am | Permalink
  I wasn't thinking of any particular reason why they might do this, I just wondered if they lost the habit if they were in an enclosure.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 8:56 am | Permalink
  Great photos – especially the last one.
  It looks to me like it's the -other- eye that is active, and they're looking at something below them. Wouldn't it be the same tilt of the head?
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 3:21 pm | Permalink
  I love these fabulous photos! And I've always assumed it was to keep watch for predators, but now I really want to know 🙂
  I think I would assume mostly (a – predators) with an element of all of them.
  I would suggest that (a) and (b) are partially testable, based on position in the food chain.
  How do birds that are commonly preyed upon by other birds compare to birds that are not or to those that eat ground-level food?
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 10:47 am | Permalink
  Yes, and you might also note that three of the photos in my presentation are of flycatchers, who may well be scanning the sky for insects to eat.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 11:06 am | Permalink
  …and, six of the photos are of shorebird species that are frequently preyed upon by Falcons.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 9:53 am | Permalink
  Good pictures. I thought the link to Red-crowned parrot well worth reading.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 11:24 am | Permalink
  Another possibility – again not mutually exclusive with the others on your list – is that birds in this posture may be turning their ear to the ground. For ground feeding birds such as some of the Turdidae, listening for movements of potential prey items either just beneath the soil surface or within the leaf litter may represent one way of detecting a meal.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 3:25 pm | Permalink
  That's certainly another good hypothesis, especially germane for ground-feeding birds such as the American Robin (in the Turdidae)
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 11:28 am | Permalink
  Interesting ideas! And impressive photos.
  Do birds with forward-placed eyes and binocular vision (owls, eagles, falcons) also do this? All of the example photos are of birds with laterally-placed eyes. Some of the hypotheses could apply to binocular vision, but not others.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 3:27 pm | Permalink
  That's another very good point. I have no pictures of owls or diurnal raptors in this pose.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 7:58 pm | Permalink
  Loved the photos and the theme. It's interesting that birds adapted to walking on the ground and those adapted to tree-perching display this trait. You'd think it would be more prevalent in birds that frequent the open ground, but apparently not. I like the comment above speculating about binocular vs. laterally placed eyes.
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 9:54 pm | Permalink
  Posted November 11, 2020 at 11:38 pm | Permalink
  How do you know they're looking up rather than looking down?
  Posted November 12, 2020 at 4:07 am | Permalink
  …wonderful!… in some way, one of my favourites of your submissions John!… kinda makes it 'real'er in a wildlife sense…