When a large flock of birds take flight suddenly (ex. if they’re startled) how do they know where to go instead of flying off in all directions?
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So the birds are going to first, fly in a direction away from the danger, so they will go in the same general direction. Many birds “flock”, meaning the fly together as a group. After a startle they fly opposite direction from the danger and the flocking instinct (for some but not all birds) will kick in and they stay as a group. Why flock? The mass of many birds is harder for a predator to track, so as a group they have a better chance of getting away. Whereas one bird flying itself has the full, undivided attention of the predator and the predator can focus on just getting that one bird. Predators have a harder time focusing on a single individual to target when they group in a flock. The flocking makes it hard to focus on just one bird to attack, this buys the flocking birds time to get away due to the slower predator reaction. You see a similar thing in schools of fish. Same reason basically.
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