* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Driving Entertainment and Education – Livability.com

    Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Transforming Entertainment and Education

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Charlie Hunnam Reflects on Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story – Yahoo

    Charlie Hunnam Reveals the Dark Challenges of Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

    “Reba” cast, then and now: See the stars 24 years later (and who’s reunited for another show) – Yahoo

    “Reba” cast, then and now: See the stars 24 years later (and who’s reunited for another show) – Yahoo

    Why Taylor Swift Name-Dropped Elizabeth Taylor in Her New Album – Yahoo

    Here’s Why Taylor Swift Dropped Elizabeth Taylor’s Name in Her New Album

    Al Roker Gives Olivia Dean an Unexpected ‘New Job’ on the ‘Today’ Show – Yahoo

    Al Roker Shocks Olivia Dean with an Exciting New Role on the ‘Today’ Show

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Is Light-Speed Analog Computing the Future of Technology? – BIOENGINEER.ORG

    Could Light-Speed Analog Computing Transform the Future of Technology?

    ARM Institute opens technology project call to speed submarine manufacturing – The Robot Report

    ARM Institute Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology Project to Revolutionize Submarine Manufacturing

    Forget Cowbells. Cows Wear High-Tech Collars Now. – The New York Times

    Ditch the Cowbells: Discover the High-Tech Collars Transforming Cattle Care

    What the Recent Price Surge Means for Figure Technology Solutions After SEC Settlement – Yahoo Finance

    What the Recent Price Surge Reveals About Figure Technology Solutions Following SEC Settlement

    MAC Brings iPad Technology to Football Sidelines Across All 13 Member Schools – Sports Video Group

    MAC Brings iPad Technology to Football Sidelines Across All 13 Member Schools – Sports Video Group

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Driving Entertainment and Education – Livability.com

    Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Transforming Entertainment and Education

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Charlie Hunnam Reflects on Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story – Yahoo

    Charlie Hunnam Reveals the Dark Challenges of Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

    “Reba” cast, then and now: See the stars 24 years later (and who’s reunited for another show) – Yahoo

    “Reba” cast, then and now: See the stars 24 years later (and who’s reunited for another show) – Yahoo

    Why Taylor Swift Name-Dropped Elizabeth Taylor in Her New Album – Yahoo

    Here’s Why Taylor Swift Dropped Elizabeth Taylor’s Name in Her New Album

    Al Roker Gives Olivia Dean an Unexpected ‘New Job’ on the ‘Today’ Show – Yahoo

    Al Roker Shocks Olivia Dean with an Exciting New Role on the ‘Today’ Show

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Is Light-Speed Analog Computing the Future of Technology? – BIOENGINEER.ORG

    Could Light-Speed Analog Computing Transform the Future of Technology?

    ARM Institute opens technology project call to speed submarine manufacturing – The Robot Report

    ARM Institute Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology Project to Revolutionize Submarine Manufacturing

    Forget Cowbells. Cows Wear High-Tech Collars Now. – The New York Times

    Ditch the Cowbells: Discover the High-Tech Collars Transforming Cattle Care

    What the Recent Price Surge Means for Figure Technology Solutions After SEC Settlement – Yahoo Finance

    What the Recent Price Surge Reveals About Figure Technology Solutions Following SEC Settlement

    MAC Brings iPad Technology to Football Sidelines Across All 13 Member Schools – Sports Video Group

    MAC Brings iPad Technology to Football Sidelines Across All 13 Member Schools – Sports Video Group

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Flock together: Sparrows drift from favored spots after losing friends

August 7, 2023
in Science
Flock together: Sparrows drift from favored spots after losing friends
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

sparrow

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Losing long-lasting flockmates may drive a golden-crowned sparrow to stray from its favorite overwintering spot, a new study says, suggesting that friendly, familiar faces help anchor it to familiar spaces.

Led by ecologists at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the study found that a golden-crowned sparrow returning to California after a winter migration—one that can stretch as many as 3,000 miles—resettled an average of just 90 feet away from the center of its previous year’s range.

But golden-crowned sparrows appearing for at least their third consecutive winter began to drift from their preferred locales when their closest flockmates failed to rejoin them down south—hinting that, even for sparrows, home is where the heart is.

“The fact that they come back to this winter site and then hang out with the same individuals—and it’s important for them to be with the same individuals—is kind of a crazy thing that we’re still wrapping our heads around,” said lead author Annie Madsen, who earned her doctorate from Nebraska in May.

Madsen and her colleagues undertook the research hoping to untangle the knot of what she called a “chicken-and-egg question.” Many animals, including the golden-crowned sparrow, share space with members of their species. In many cases, they also spend time around and interact with those neighbors. Golden-crowned sparrows, for instance, have adopted what are called fission-fusion networks, spending minutes or hours congregating in small groups before dispersing, only to later reassemble with different members of the larger flock.

The challenge for ecologists: figuring out how much animals are interacting with their own because they happen to value the same territory—especially one rich with food—versus sharing that space because they value the social bonds and benefits of the friends they find there. Which ties, in other words, actually bind?

“Are they coming together because of a resource? Are they coming together because of social partnerships? And as they come together for resources, do they gain social partners? Or are they using social partners to find resources? It’s a complex question,” Madsen said, “that’s really hard to get at.

“But we wanted to know if there was some kind of directionality here, if there was one of those forces that took precedence. Do they care about this one specific patch of bushes, which is a really nice patch that they come back to every year? Or is it their friends, their flockmates, that they’re coming back to spend time with?”

As the overwintering site for thousands of golden-crowned sparrows fleeing the cold of Alaska and western Canada, an arboretum at the University of California, Santa Cruz seemed as fitting a place as any to investigate. From 2009 to 2019, the combination of multi-colored leg bands and diligent observation by scores of researchers and volunteers helped map both the geographic distribution and social networks of individual sparrows.

The more consecutive winters a golden-crowned sparrow spent in Santa Cruz, the less its average range shifted from the prior year, with the sparrow seeming to home in on and develop an affinity for a particular site. On its own, that finding might have pointed toward certain spots boasting certain features that were ultra-appealing to the species.

But that decade of data also allowed the team to identify the equivalent of each sparrow’s closest friends, or the 10% of fellow golden-crowned sparrows it was most likely to be spotted with in a given year.

An average sparrow, Madsen and her colleagues discovered, was liable to lose about 52% of its favored flockmates across however many years it migrated to Santa Cruz. And in the years that its closest social contacts did fail to return, the shift in a sparrow’s home range tended to reverse course, flitting not closer but instead farther from its prior center.

To Madsen and her colleagues, the finding suggests that a sparrow’s loyalty lies not just with a locale, and the resources it might offer, but with the fine feathered friends it comes to expect will be there to greet it. When the latter wanes, a sparrow’s ties to a specific location appear to wane, too.

That’s all the more telling, Madsen said, given that resources are generally less scarce, and real estate less prized, when overwintering than when seeking mates and raising a handful of hatchlings in the summer.

“It’s really interesting that they’re coming back to such specific sites on their wintering grounds, where it doesn’t seem like it wouldn’t matter that much—especially since, at an arboretum, they have pretty cushy lives,” said Madsen, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “There are nice bushes everywhere. My collaborators lay out millet seed piles so that they can study dominance behavior, so there’s food everywhere. And yet (the sparrows) are still coming back to these really specific places within the arboretum.

“Whether it’s more this social cohesion—individuals staying together because they prefer to be together—or maybe partially that they’re trying to avoid dominance interactions with other individuals, it does seem like there’s something there. There’s something to having familiar flockmates that is important.”

There was more. The team discovered a quantitative quirk that bolstered the case for the magnetism of friendship: The loss of flockmates didn’t seem to much affect the home ranges of golden-crowned sparrows that were returning for only their second winter in Santa Cruz. Though it’s not definitive, Madsen said the discovery could indicate that second-year sparrows hadn’t developed as many close contacts, or as tight-knit of bonds, as sparrows that had been coming back to California for at least several consecutive winters.

“Some of these relationships are being built up over multiple years,” Madsen said. “And as one sparrow is returning again and again, not only are they maintaining friendships with all of the flockmates that do return, they also make new friendships. They gain new flockmates from new immigrants, from first-year birds that are coming into the population. So they’re building lots of social capital.”

The paper is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More information:
Anastasia E. Madsen et al, Loss of flockmates weakens winter site fidelity in golden-crowned sparrows ( Zonotrichia atricapilla ), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2219939120

Citation:
Flock together: Sparrows drift from favored spots after losing friends (2023, August 7)
retrieved 7 August 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-08-flock-sparrows-drift-favored-friends.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Phys.org – https://phys.org/news/2023-08-flock-sparrows-drift-favored-friends.html

Tags: Flocksciencetogether'
Previous Post

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s early work revolutionized the field of quantum chemistry, and his theory is still used today

Next Post

Cowboys kicking competition gets ugly as both kickers have nightmare day at training camp

Create Your Own Private Garden and Escape the World – Signals AZ

Design Your Own Private Garden Sanctuary and Escape the Everyday

October 8, 2025
Rethinking New York City’s Economy: “The Menace Of Prosperity” – Forbes

Rethinking New York City’s Economy: Confronting the Hidden Challenges of Prosperity

October 8, 2025
Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Driving Entertainment and Education – Livability.com

Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Transforming Entertainment and Education

October 8, 2025
Eagles Host Towson Wednesday for Mental Health Awareness Game – aueagles.com

Eagles Face Towson Wednesday in Impactful Mental Health Awareness Showdown

October 7, 2025
Trump questions back pay for federal workers furloughed as part of government shutdown – CNN

Trump Challenges Back Pay for Federal Workers Impacted by Government Shutdown

October 7, 2025
Learned use of an innate sound-meaning association in birds – Nature

How Birds Unlock Natural Sound-Meaning Links Through Learning

October 7, 2025
This Ancient Statue Was Discarded by Raiders. Scientists Think It’s a Rare Treasure. – Popular Mechanics

Forgotten by Raiders, This Ancient Statue Could Be a Priceless Treasure

October 7, 2025
Scientists used AI to map uncharted areas of the mouse brain – Live Science

Scientists Harness AI to Uncover Hidden Regions of the Mouse Brain

October 7, 2025
Pets of the Day: Sweep the clouds away with Zoe, Telly and Elmo – Yahoo

Meet Zoe, Telly, and Elmo: Your Daily Dose of Sunshine and Smiles

October 7, 2025
Is Light-Speed Analog Computing the Future of Technology? – BIOENGINEER.ORG

Could Light-Speed Analog Computing Transform the Future of Technology?

October 7, 2025

Categories

Archives

October 2025
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Sep    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (856)
  • Economy (877)
  • Entertainment (21,750)
  • General (17,468)
  • Health (9,919)
  • Lifestyle (889)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (878)
  • Politics (888)
  • Science (16,087)
  • Sports (21,377)
  • Technology (15,857)
  • World (860)

Recent News

Create Your Own Private Garden and Escape the World – Signals AZ

Design Your Own Private Garden Sanctuary and Escape the Everyday

October 8, 2025
Rethinking New York City’s Economy: “The Menace Of Prosperity” – Forbes

Rethinking New York City’s Economy: Confronting the Hidden Challenges of Prosperity

October 8, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version