When we talk about flying the nest in human terms, what we mean is a sudden, dramatic exit from a place of comfort and safety to having to fend for ourselves. I find it interesting that this is not what birds do. As it is very much fledgling season right now, I thought it a good time to explore this.

Aquatic birds leave the nest not long after hatching. Fuzzy, excited and with no idea about anything much, they are led to water. Floating comes naturally to them, and momma duck, or in the case of swans, both parents, will get to work teaching them how to survive. Young swans will still be with their parents into the winter.

Other birds have to wait for flight feathers before they can leave the nest, although their flying may be minimal – as in the case of baby owls I have observed. Again what happens here is that fledglings leave the nest with their parents, and go about with them being fed and learning how to feed and how to do all the other things they need to know about. Again as many birds are gregarious (it’s safer that way) young may stay with their parents until the start of the new breeding season, or in the case of birds who operate in flocks, they may always be loosely together. It takes hunting birds quite some time to develop the necessary survival skills, they certainly aren’t ready to go it alone when they fly the nest.

The nest is of course the place of early life, security, and food coming to you. Not that the nest is a place of absolute safety as many predators are looking for the easy meal of young birds. Many birds will never get as far as to leave the nest under their own propulsion.

There is a little bit of drama in that first flight, but less so when it’s not framed by commentary, background music and a sense of artificial peril. Nature programs tend to focus on the dramatic, and that can be misleading. I’ve seen it only once in real life, more times on nature films. The first flight is not big, and no more dramatic than is essential, though. A glide to the nearest branch. For the first few days fledglings may stay close to the nest and food is still brought to them.

I find it curious that we’ve taken ‘flying the nest’ as a human metaphor for dramatic upheaval. It doesn’t reflect what birds do. It also doesn’t reflect what most gregarious mammals do, either. For most creatures there is a long and necessary transition between getting out of the birth space and being able to live independently.

Art on this blog post is ‘Peffa Oidy witches’ – image by Tom Brown based on the Matlock the Hare series by Phil and Jacqui Lovesey.