Veery predicts hurricanes months ahead of time
In the inaugural episode of this new series "Connected" on Netflix (below), he interviews a Delaware researcher who has concluded that Veeries leave their nesting site earlier in years when hurricanes are more severe, and they do this with much better reliability than the best supercomputer modeling. Amazing! He was puzzled what evolutionary advantage there was to leaving the brooding site early, since an early departure lowers breeding success - he ruled out predators, food supply, and then stumbled upon weather patterns that impeded their migration to Brazil. He tested prospectively and was able to predict a bad hurricane season better than long-range weather forecasts.
Do you think the bird does this by gauging temperature, humidity, weather patterns? What's your hunch as to how the bird can augur* when hurricanes season is bad enough to force them to migrate early?
* I used augur instead of "divined" or "guessed" because augury was a means of predicting the future using birds: An augur was a priest and official in the classical Roman world. His main role was the practice of augury: Interpreting the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds – whether they were flying in groups or alone, what noises they made as they flew, direction of flight, and what kind of birds they were. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augur#History_and_public_role
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