The bird that follows the Sun, and steps out of time

Research by ecologists at Oxford University suggests that the wild migratory seabirds that breed in burrows on windswept islands off Britain and winter in South America can lose their bearings when rapid eastward flights leave their circadian rhythm out of step with local time

The explanation lies in the delicate balance between biology and astronomy, the scientists write in an article in Nature.

2 min readNov 7, 2026 06:50 AM IST First published on: Nov 7, 2026 at 06:50 AM IST

In his novel Einstein’s Dreams, physicist Alan Lightman imagines worlds where time misbehaves — it loops, stalls, or runs at different speeds from one place to the next. The people who live in them must cope with the gap between the hour they feel and the hour the world keeps. Lightman’s universe was a fantasy but for the global citizen, jet lag is an existential hazard, the price paid for crossing meridians in pursuit of commerce or pleasure. The Manx shearwater, it turns out, knows it, too. Research by ecologists at Oxford University, drawing on two decades of GPS tracking, suggests that the wild migratory seabirds that breed in burrows on windswept islands off Britain and winter in South America can lose their bearings when rapid eastward flights leave their circadian rhythm out of step with local time.

The explanation lies in the delicate balance between biology and astronomy, the scientists write in an article in Nature. Shearwaters use the Sun as a navigational reference, interpreting its position through an internal sense of time. But when the body clock fails to keep pace with the Earth’s rotation, the compass becomes misleading, including even when the birds follow a coastline, where familiar landmarks could act as markers. Experienced adult birds appear better equipped to compensate, drawing on navigational knowledge accumulated over the years. Younger birds are more vulnerable, sometimes straying hundreds of kilometres off course.

The discovery carries a profound implication about the importance of the Sun in anchoring a migratory avian’s sense of direction. But the shearwater’s predicament is also a lesson in humility, in learning to go easy on one’s certainties. One may know one’s destination but still be hopelessly lost.