Speaker: William Saidel, Rutgers University Camden

Title: Insight into the activities of groups of birds

Abstract: Some avian species exist singularly. Others, such as starlings, group in numbers from hundreds to hundreds of thousands (or more). As a continuing project of an REU program at Rutgers-Camden, a group of us have been studying in nature and in modeling different activities of birds that exhibit clustering. We have examined in detail two different activities: birds on wires and birds arising from the ground. The former is describable by a relatively simple relationship: attraction and repulsion of neighbors, while the latter is more complicated and involves factors involving density, spacing, local grouping and individual orientation. We will show both video and computer simulations illustrating these issues.