JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Despite the advice they get from Billie Eilish, birds of a feather do not necessarily stick together. New research suggests some birds are getting divorced. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has more.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: In Europe, there's a common type of bird called the great tit.
ADELAIDE ABRAHAM: I don't know my American birds, so I don't know what the size comparison is, but they're a sort of small songbird. They're a bit yellow. They've got a nice, handsome black stripe on the front.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRD CHIRPING)
BRUMFIEL: Adelaide Abraham studies the birds at Oxford University, and in particular, she looks at how their social behavior affects their breeding. In the spring, the little birds couple up to make babies. The male feeds his female partner as she incubates the eggs.
ABRAHAM: And once the chicks are hatched, both of the parents will go out looking for food. Caterpillars are best, but lots of different sort of insects - and they'll bring them back for the chicks and feed them until the chicks fledge.
BRUMFIEL: When the babies fly away, the couple's duties are done. But what happens then? To find out, Abraham and her colleagues used little radio trackers to track individual birds in the woods near Oxford. As summer turned into fall, they discovered that many pairs continued to hang out at bird feeders together, but others did not. Some couples seemed to start drifting apart.
ABRAHAM: Those divorcing birds - they, from the start, are already not associating as much as the faithful birds, and then that difference only increases as the winter goes on.
BRUMFIEL: As a divorcee myself, I have to say, this is the least surprising result I've ever heard a scientist tell me.
ABRAHAM: Yeah, we've got that a lot. People are like, oh, well, we really could have predicted that. I'm like, it's still good to know, still good to know, for sure.
BRUMFIEL: The work appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Other researchers agree, this is an interesting finding. Sarah Khalil is at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
SARAH KHALIL: In some ways, it might seem obvious, but the other way that this study could have gone is that they're just like, well, there's no association with who they're hanging out with during the nonbreeding season.
BRUMFIEL: The flock might just randomly hang out together until it's time to pair up in the spring. Instead, it seems like individuals are ditching their exes and building new relationships over the winter months. Now, Abraham does want to be clear. These birds aren't really getting divorced. They're not serving each other with papers or appearing in tiny courtrooms, high in the trees. Still, she says, the work shows...
ABRAHAM: There is actually a lot more going on in those flocks of birds out your window than you think there is.
BRUMFIEL: Bird drama is real. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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