[nmh]

Actually animals have sharper senses than humans. They can detect weather changes. For example some birds fly south before winter and make the same stops each year. Dogs sniff out people. They DO know when storms are approaching as well.

[capt. norm]

Birds also have a biological micro-barometer, that they normally use to judge their altitude, and it's also a very good weather predictor. The barometric change cycle caused by an approaching storm is easily picked up by them.

You may have noticed that when the pressure drops ahead of a storm, swallows, purple martins, etc. fly at lower altitudes.

[Swanks]

My weather barometer (NC) isn't the clueless weather people on TV - but the birds in the yard. Watch for them to go crazy feeding and you know snow is REALLY coming in 24 hrs..

[EEDUDE]

When I was in High School in North Carolina, we had a hurricane coming up the coast and about to strike us.

The birds just went nuts. We had twenty or thirty blackbirds which flew down our chimney an hour or so before the storm hit.

Wierd. I think they responded to changes in barometric pressure.