The Migration Conversation: How Birds and Cooperation are Rewriting the Rules of Nature

Tennessee Warbler

For decades, we’ve imagined migrating birds as solitary travelers guided by instinct across thousands of miles. But an analysis of over half a million bird banding records has revealed something extraordinary: songbirds migrate in communities, forming social bonds across species lines and “talking” to each other as they fly through the night sky. Migration, it turns out, is a conversation. This finding advances our understanding of bird migration and challenges the prevailing competitive narrative that has long shaped our view of nature and society.

The problem with a narrative focused on competition is that it is a patriarchal projection. This individualistic view of migration didn’t emerge from a clear view of the lived experience of birds; it emerged from the assumptions scientists brought to their observations. For much of the 20th century, behavioral biology was dominated by frameworks emphasizing competition, territoriality, and individual fitness above all else. These values—rugged self-reliance, aggressive competition for scarce resources, hierarchical dominance—mirror the ideals celebrated in patriarchal cultures.

When researchers expected to see solitary competitors, that’s what they recorded. The same bias that long ignored or undervalued collaboration in human societies led scientists to overlook the intricate social networks that make migration possible, often dismissing female behaviors and cooperative strategies as exceptions or anomalies rather than fundamental patterns. It took citizen scientists, many of them women, along with new technologies like mass bird banding and acoustic monitoring, to reveal what had been there all along: birds succeed not despite each other, but because of each other.

It took new data to validate what some observers had seen all along. For years, I’ve noticed how closely connected some migrating birds are as they travel together. The pond in our backyard is a good place to witness this dynamic; in spring and fall, migrants show up in small flocks.

I remember two Tennessee warblers that were strongly bonded. They flew in together, perched on the top of the cherry tree, and then hopped down to the lower branches together. For the next few minutes, they were never more than 2 feet apart. They bathed within 2 inches of each other, and when one flew up, the other followed. When they finished bathing, they preened next to each other in the cherry tree, and then both of them flew together up into the canopy of a large red oak tree where they foraged side-by-side for a few minutes before flying off together to a silver maple. These birds were clearly connected.

Tennessee Warblers

Connections between birds are also on display in the fall at one of our urban parks, where a Siberian Elm tree attracts birds and birdwatchers. The magic elm is filled with birds every September. More than 20 warblers intently pick tiny flying ants out of crevices in the bark. Thousands of ants emerge from this tree and fill the air, prompting mixed flocks of migrating birds to descend. When food is this abundant, the warblers come together in groups and forage 12 inches apart. To me, it looks like they are a cohesive flock. Ebird data suggests this is the case. Every fall there are periods of 3-5 days where the same number and mix of species are reported at the Magic Elm. This year the mix included five Tennessee Warblers, two Cape May Warblers, and one Bay-breasted Warbler. When they have eaten their fill of flying ants and the weather is right, they all leave at the same time.

Five Tennessee Warblers and one Bay-breasted Warbler foraging for flying ants on the trunk of the magic elm.

Tennessee Warbler eating tiny flying ants

Tennessee Warbler with flying ant stuck to its bill

The evidence extends beyond songbirds. GPS tracking research by Patrik Byholm at the University of Helsinki revealed that juvenile Caspian terns migrate with their biological fathers or occasionally a foster male. These adult-juvenile pairs migrate more slowly than solo adults, allowing the young birds to learn crucial navigation skills. The stakes are high: GPS data showed that all four juveniles who lost contact with their adult guide during migration died before reaching their destination. This dramatic finding underscores how vital social bonds can be for survival during the dangerous journey.

A pioneering study led by Joely DeSimone, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, published in August 2024 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed over half a million bird banding records from five sites across northeastern North America. Researchers discovered that songbirds form “migrating communities” and socialize across species lines, with consistent social relationships that persist across different stopover sites and seasons.

The results showed that birds like Nashville Warblers and Tennessee Warblers seemed to seek each other out during migration. Species with similar foraging styles and genetic relationships appeared to learn from one another and follow their traveling buddies to patches of good habitat. Out of all 50 species studied, only American Redstarts and Ruby-crowned Kinglets appeared to be actively avoiding each other—all other species showed patterns of association rather than avoidance.

An even more recent study led by Benjamin Van Doren of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, published in January 2025 in Current Biology, analyzed over 18,300 hours of recorded nocturnal flight calls from 26 sites across eastern North America. Using machine learning, researchers found that songbirds form social associations during flight itself, with migrants engaging in distinct associations with an average of 2.7 other species.

Social associations were stronger among species with similar wing lengths (which relates to flight speed) and similar vocalizations, suggesting birds may “talk” to other species as they migrate, possibly exchanging information about navigation or suitable stopover habitat.

Some of these researchers would like to add birdwatchers’ observations of migrating birds to their future studies. I plan to reach out and share my images and observations with them. If you have any stories to share about migrating birds forming “migrating communities”, leave them in the comments and I will share them with the researchers.

This is about more than bird research. These findings challenge a narrative that has shaped not only ornithology but our broader understanding of nature itself. For generations, we’ve been told that evolution is primarily a story of competition—of individuals struggling against each other for limited resources, with only the fittest surviving. This framework has seemed to justify competitive, hierarchical social structures as “natural” and inevitable. If even birds, we reasoned, are solitary competitors, then surely cooperation is a luxury, a thin veneer over our true competitive nature.

But the data tells a different story. Cooperation isn’t the exception in nature—it’s fundamental to survival. Birds sharing flight calls to maintain formation. Warblers guiding each other to productive foraging sites. Tern fathers patiently teaching their young the ancient routes. These aren’t anomalies to be explained away. They’re sophisticated survival strategies refined over millions of years of evolution. Competition exists, certainly, but it operates within a larger context of mutual dependence and collective benefit.

The implications ripple outward. When we see nature through a purely competitive lens, we miss half the story—and we limit our vision for what’s possible in human society. We dismiss cooperation as naive or inefficient, when in fact it may be the most effective strategy for navigating complex challenges. The migrating birds above us, forming their vast undulating rivers of life, offer a different model: one where individual success is inextricably linked to the welfare of the group, where information flows freely across boundaries, and where the experienced guide the inexperienced not as an act of charity but as an investment in collective survival.

The birds do not travel alone, and neither do we. Understanding this isn’t sentimentality—it’s clear-eyed recognition of ecological reality. As climate change disrupts migration timing and habitat loss fragments their routes, the social networks that allow birds to share information and adapt quickly may be their best hope for survival. The same is true for us. The task at hand is learning to cooperate with this flow, to observe what millions of years of evolution can teach us about balancing individual needs with collective wellbeing—not as political preference, but as ecological reality. This is how life actually works.