Feisty songbirds swarm their predators — but only when the time's right

• 2 years ago
• Radio
• Duration 8:14

In a recent Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution study, researchers describe what happened to birds in the area when they played northern pygmy owl calls through a loudspeaker in the Pacific Northwest forest. For the most part, the call was enough to scare off nearby songbirds, which make up the owl's diet. But sometimes, the songbirds defied the unwritten laws of nature that call for prey to flee. Instead, they chose to fight and together mobbed their perceived attacker. Wildlife biologist Madeleine Scott said that these mobbing events were more likely to happen during the spring and summer seasons, when food is more abundant for the songbirds.