Birds found to sense severe storms and flee

Golden-winged warblers were found to sense a deadly tornado-producing storm in Tennessee, killing 35 people, and flee well before time.

More than 24 hours before the arrival of the storm, the birds fled 1,500 kilometres away in a period of 5 days.

"The most curious finding is that the birds left long before the storm arrived," said Henry Streby of the University of California, Berkeley.

"At the same time that meteorologists on The Weather Channel were telling us this storm was headed in our direction, the birds were apparently already packing their bags and evacuating the area," Streby said.

The finding published in Current Biology, came as an accident as the original research was meant to test whether the warblers, which weigh "less than two nickels," could carry geolocators on their backs.