The first astonishing ability of birds and other organisms is the ability to navigate vast distances east to west by using the earth's magnetic field:
Because each field line on the earth has a particular intensity and angle (inclination or declination), this provides a fixed coordinate system that animals with the right equipment can utilize, even though these values are not always at right angles.... Maybe birds learned this trick from sea turtles, which also use the magnetic field in this way....In fact, many diverse species - from eels, to birds, to butterflies - migrate. How did this capacity evolve in so many unrelated organisms. It won't do to just wave the wand and intone, "natural selection!" That's an answer that sounds convincing only to those already convinced. To an open-minded, skeptical inquirer it's hardly a compelling explanation for how such a complex mechanism could evolve by chance numerous times in biological history.
Here's another fascinating avian fact:
Ruddy shelducks, when migrating past the Himalayas, can fly as high as 6,800 meters (22,000 feet). That’s 77 percent the height of Mt. Everest and over half the altitude of a passenger jet at cruising altitude.What conceivable selection pressure acted upon duck populations in their evolutionary past that caused this ability to evolve?
At only 4,000 meters, oxygen levels drop to half of sea level values. How do the ducks survive the cold and low oxygen?
Crows and cockatoos seem locked in a battle for the coveted title of most intelligent bird. New Caledonian crows are known to bend pieces of wire into hooks in order to fish items out of holes. Now, cockatoos seem to have bested them by figuring out ways to bend pipe cleaners into hooks to retrieve a reward or unbend them into straight lines as the experimental setup requires.The final amazing phenomenon displayed by birds is shown in the following video clip. Watch it and ponder how these birds all know to turn the same way at precisely the same instant and without colliding? And why do they do this anyway? What's the evolutionary advantage?
Nothing in these parrots’ environment requires working out this kind of problem. The experiments showed variation in the way individual birds solved the challenges, suggesting that they are not relying on instincts, but actually figuring out solutions in real time.
Check out the link for more on the details of the research being done on these phenomena.
In general, there are two alternative possible explanations for these remarkable behaviors: Either they're all the astonishing result of blind mechanical processes acting on random genetic mutations over eons of time or they're the product of an intelligent, purposeful design.
Since we know minds can engineer complexity of this sort (e.g. think of a computer) and since we have no experience of unthinking forces producing the kind of information necessary for complex behavior we're left with a question: Which of the two possible explanations requires the most faith to believe?
