The Speed of Bird

The reaction time of birds is faster than our own. By allot I learned the other day while eating a sandwich in front of central station in Amsterdam. You can test this yourself if you live anywhere where the common blackbird lives (Merel). The blackbird used to be a shy forest bird but lately has taken to the city with vigor, out scavenging the much slower and apparently stupider pigeon. At a busy snack bar the blackbird will sometimes outnumber the pigeon and are in any case well represented and not in the lest bit shy. One took a bite of my falafel while I was holding it in my hand, only inches from my face, just because I had turned my head the other way. I was greatly impressed and decided to feed only the blackbirds and leave the pigeons to starve. Hoping that this would work out as I wanted it to I threw a small bit of the bread to one of the birds directly at my feet. To my amazement the bird had time enough (after it realized that the bread had left my hand) to rise into the air and fly to meet the bread half way. I repeated this as a sort of experiment seven times with seven different birds and they all performed the same feat seemingly effortlessly. To me it was as if time itself slowed to accommodate the birds behavior.

here is a video of starlings (who also seem to have a decent reaction time)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zhDfqmvfkA&feature=related