Member-only story
It started at the dining room table, looking out the window at the bird feeder.
I asked myself, “How do the birds know that a storm is coming?”
On this particular morning, my wife and I could see the storm moving in from the Pacific Ocean. Somehow, the birds knew the storm was coming, too. We enjoy watching the birds eating breakfast outside on the deck while we eat breakfast inside. But this particular morning, the birds were nowhere to be seen. We’ve observed this phenomenon before. The birds know when a storm is coming, and they hunker down in the trees and bushes in our semi-rural neighborhood.
I wondered idly to myself if the birds could sense changes in barometric pressure, since the pressure usually drops before and during a storm. But then I thought of a simpler solution: “Maybe it’s just harder to fly when the pressure drops. It’s more work, so the birds don’t go out as much.”
You may have heard of a principle in philosophy called “Occam’s Razor.” In general terms, the principle is that, if there’s more than one possible explanation for something, the simpler explanation is often correct. To my mind, the question had two possible answers:
1) all flying birds have built-in barometric sensors, or