How does the early bird get the worm?

Question

Seems to me that birds don't always see their target because they often come-up with nothing after a lunge into the dirt. The birds seem to actually be "listening" as they move thier head around. Can birds "hear" worms? I'd like to hear about any studies done on this. Do birds share abilities with bats? ...the sonar thing?

Answer 1

Okay, here are some abstracts from an article (a bit dense, but solid info):

"American robins are common garden birds over much of North America and their distinctive foraging behaviour is well known, although little studied (Heppner 1965; Eiserer 1980; Paszkowski 1982; Swihart & Johnson 1986). Earthworms may comprise up to 20% of their diet (Kalmbach 1914; Howell 1941), particularly during the breeding season, and these are typically captured on mown Correspondence: R. Montgomerie, Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada (email: [e-mail]). 0003–472/97/070143+09 $25.00/0/ar960411 ? 1997 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour 143 lawns. Foraging robins run several steps at a time, tilt their heads to one side for up to a few seconds, then lunge at the ground, often driving their bill well into the soil where they grab an earthworm, pull it to the surface and consume it or take it to feed their nestlings. Some lunges
are unsuccessful, but capture rates as high as 20 earthworms per hour have been recorded (Heppner 1965; R. Montgomerie, unpublished data). In an experimental study of robin foraging behaviour, Heppner (1965) concluded that American robins locate earthworms exclusively by visual cues. He based this conclusion on a series of experiments in which robins were able to find earthworms placed in holes in a lawn (but still visible) even in the presence of loud white noise (which would have obscured any auditory cues).

Our own field observations of robins foraging suggested to us that they might also use other sensory modes while searching for earthworms. When they tilt their head they appear to be listening (see also Tyler 1949), and we have watched robins successfully foraging on lawns where the grass was long enough to make earthworms difficult to see. We also watched a captive robin catch earthworms buried in soil where we could detect no visual cues that would reveal an earthworm’s location. Thus it seemed to us that auditory, olfactory or vibrotactile cues might be used in addition to visual cues when localizing prey. Our objective in this study was to test experimentally the ability of captive robins to use each of these sensory modalities when hunting for worms."

Lots of experiments, etc., followed, full article link below. Final conclusions:

"Collectively, these results strongly suggest that the robins located buried mealworms and earthworms by using auditory cues. Robins did not locate dead mealworms (experiment 1) and located live mealworms when olfactory cues were unavailable
(experiment 3), indicating that olfactory cues were not used to locate mealworms. When vibrotactile cues were eliminated (experiment 2 and probably experiments 3 and 4), the robins were still successful at finding mealworms, indicating that they
were not finding mealworms from vibrations in the soil. Similarly, the robins found mealworms in the absence of visual cues (experiment 3). Thus, experiments 1–3 demonstrated that robins can find mealworms at a relatively high success rate when auditory cues are available and some or all of the other sensory cues are eliminated. In experiment 4, we showed that, when other sensory cues were available and auditory cues were obscured, robins made fewer feeding attempts and were less
successful when they did attempt to feed than they were when auditory cues were available (experiment 1), although the differences were not significant. Even though white noise reduced foraging success, three of the four birds still performed
much better than expected by chance, suggesting either that the birds were still able to detect auditory cues or that, in the absence of auditory cues, the birds used other cues to locate the mealworms. Unfortunately, our attempts to get the birds to strike at artificially produced sounds were unsuccessful, but such experiments will be needed to fully understand which auditory cues are important and how they are used to localize sounds. Our attempts to mask mealworm sounds with white noise were also relatively unsophisticated in that our playback equipment probably did not have a flat frequency response. Studies of auditory mechanisms suggest that small birds might have a variety of methods available for localizing sounds (reviewed in Knudsen 1980). One possibility is that they use the differential sound pressure reaching each side of the tympanum through the ear canal and the interaural pathway (Figure 10-1 in Knudsen 1980). Such a mechanism could account for the characteristic ‘head-cocking’ of foraging robins, which would maximize the distance that wormgenerated sound would travel to each side of the tympanum (B. Frost, personal communication). The sounds made by mealworms are short, repeated and contain a range of frequencies, making them more readily localizable, whatever the mechanism. An alternative explanation for ‘head-cocking’ is that robins attempt to focus the apparent source of sound on the fovea of their eye to improve visual acuity (Sillman 1973). Examination of both the location of the fovea in the robin and the videotapes of foraging birds suggests to us that the angle of head-cocking is consistent with this explanation. Thus although this head-cocking behaviour makes the bird appear to be listening, it may actually result from visual searching for movement before the bird finally strikes".

Phew -- said a mouthful that time!! Hope you liked it.

Answer 2

Don't know about the answer above mine. In the morning, the ground is still damp from dew. Worms will come to the surface. When it gets warmer, they go back underground where it's cooler and will have more moisture.
But like someone said, it's just a saying. Good thing they can go to crapdonalds to eat :D.

Answer 3

Early birds "don't always get the worm". It is a saying invented by Type "A" personalities with early rising times. I have outdone these types on many occasions "sleeping in"

Answer 4

The early computer virus receives digested. Yeah, it would pay for the computer virus to stay hid. even if, thinking how there are various situations extra insects than birds in this international, i'm not likely to sense too sorry for the computer virus for now.

Answer 5

Ha Ha very funny he gets the worm buy opening his beak early in the morning and chews.Chomp! Chomp!

Answer 6

Robins will tip there head but it does not mean they have solar hearing lol they just do that to have a better look at there prey.

Answer 7

birds wake up very earli...around 4....and takes awhile to find food....so if u wake up later u find food later