The sound made by feathers may make for a useful warning signal when birds flock together.
Mae Hingee and Robert Magrath at the Australian National University in Canberra studied the crested pigeon, Ocyphaps lophotes (pictured), which makes a fluttering metallic sound when it flaps its wings. From recordings, they found differences between the sounds of this wing 'whistle' during normal take-offs and those of panicked flights made in response to a threat.
They then played back the sounds to groups of pigeons. Calm take-offs had no effect, but recordings of alarmed birds frequently sent flocks scattering.
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Animal communication: Warning wings. Nature 461, 148 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/461148a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/461148a