Even birds get jet lag: seabirds crossing the Atlantic arrive a few degrees off course

Manx shearwaters — neat black-and-white seabirds of the British Isles — fly thousands of miles across the Atlantic, and new research published in Science suggests they feel something like jet lag along the way. University of Oxford behavioural ecologist Patrick Lewin and colleagues found the birds can drift slightly disoriented on their long crossings, as if their internal clock and compass are briefly out of step. The reassuring part is the scale: the largest error seen, seven degrees, took a bird only about three miles off a 600-mile journey — a small wobble in an otherwise astonishing navigation system. 'This paper is so cool,' said biologist Alice Boyle of Western University in Canada, who was not part of the study.