Flight

There was some science recently to show older birds lead the flock and they have some discretion over the landing spot so they don't necessarily go to the same spot, year after year.  The way it must go is you're a junior bird until you learn the way from the older birds and at some point you graduate to be a senior at which time you can modify the path.  In that way, the destination for the flock evolves over time.  These bird brains figured out how to do that and respond to a changing climate or whatever comes.


Here for something which needs no science at all.  Unknown if the photograph got any post-processing since it has a marvelous painterly feeling.  Possibly it was just the nature of the light at that time.

Storks fly over a meadow near Beckingen, southern Germany
Photograph: Thomas Warnack/AFP/Getty Images