Interesting observation with Kiwi this morning

[Kiwibird]

This morning, around 9am, Kiwi was really being a little bleep bleep bleep and driving me nuts. Antsy, made a big loud squawk (he's typically very quiet), couldn't calm him down for the better part of an hour... I wrote it off as just woke up on the wrong side of the perch this morning or something. Reading the local news while eating lunch, apparently there was a little 3.0 earthquake and an aftershock less than 100 miles away from us. Now I know why he was so upset earlier! My little feathered seismograph sensed something we did not. I remember as a kid when the Northridge quake happened in CA (lived in AZ), my parents birds lost their minds in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. Then it was on the news the next day about the huge earthquake in California. We didn't feel it as far away as we were, but those birds sure did (or maybe sensed it in some other way).

I do wonder what it is that birds sense and what sets them off about seismic activity?

 

[GaleriaGila]

I guess they have a keen sense of magnetic fields that helps them migrate and such.
I know the Rb regularly responded to quakes back in New Mexico.

 

[SailBoat]

I'm going with his 'feeling' it! A smaller tremor (movement) is more likely felt by him than you! This is every more true if you are sitting, while he is on his perch.

 

[RavensGryf]

Earthquakes are one of the scarier things about living in SoCal. I'm always hoping that "the BIG one" doesn't happen within my lifetime!

Strange, but I don't remember ever having a parrot do that before a quake. Maybe I've always had weird birds. That's amazing your parents' birds felt the Northridge quake all the way in AZ!

 

[Kiwibird]

I guess they have a keen sense of magnetic fields that helps them migrate and such.
I know the Rb regularly responded to quakes back in New Mexico.

How did the RB respond to them?

 

[Kiwibird]

Earthquakes are one of the scarier things about living in SoCal. I'm always hoping that "the BIG one" doesn't happen within my lifetime!

Strange, but I don't remember ever having a parrot do that before a quake. Maybe I've always had weird birds. That's amazing your parents' birds felt the Northridge quake all the way in AZ!

That's also something we now have to think about up here in Oregon, being in the Cascadian subduction zone. We're also apparently quite overdue for a major quake I hope the power of Kiwi compels that not to happen He can affect geological activity you know

Interesting your birds have never reacted, as California seems to get earthquakes at least big enough for people to feel pretty regularly. Perhaps they are used to it? I was a kid when the Northridge quake happened, but I do have some vague memory of hearing adults talking about how it was actually felt in Arizona, though closer to the CA border then we were I assume. I have no recollection of actually feeling it where we lived, just the birds flipping out randomly.

 

[SailBoat]

Earthquakes rarely occur in the upper mid-west of North America (also known as the Great White North most times of the year). That said, we do have an active North /South line that will move from time to time, and like nearly everyone else, it seems to be overdue also. Wonder what, if anything that means?

Anyway, we have had three 'small' ones over the many years and in each case 'during' the shake our Amazon was quite vocal and was clearly looking for us! More than likely to protect us!?! Yup, that's my opinion and I am sticking with it!