Birds Go to Roost Mid-Morning
The most visible sign that something has broken in the natural order is birds flying back to their trees at 11 a.m. During the 2017 total solar eclipse across the United States, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences used citizen-science reports from iNaturalist to document animal behaviour across the path of totality. Birds were the most consistently reported responders. Swifts, swallows, and starlings broke off their feeding flights and returned to roost within minutes of totality. Flamingos at a wildlife sanctuary in South Carolina began moving toward their evening roosting sites before darkness was even complete.
