James E. Poteet, III, age 8, of Montgomery, Alabama, for his question:
Why does a bird ruffle his feathers?
A bunny wears a coat of cuddly fur and a bird is dressed in feathers. You put on a shirt and shorts and shoes. And now and then you take off your clothes to be washed and sometimes mended. Bunnies and birds also like to keep their clothing comfortably clean and looking handsome.
A bird has a dozen good reasons for looking smooth and smart. But he cannot take off his feathery outfit and send it to the laundry or to the cleaners. His soft, silky feathers are fixed into his skin. They grow one by one, over lapping each other with the feathery fringes folded together to make a smooth surface all over his chest and back, his wings and his handsome head. If he took all those feathers out one by one and w4shed them in a stream, he could never get them back in their proper places. Besides, each one grows from a living root in his skin, somewhat like the hairs on your head. When you pull out a hair, you cannot put it back again you must wait for the root to sprout a new hair.
The feathery coat of a bird tends to get dusty and dirty. Most likely he feels just as you do when your busy day is over and your clothes are mussed and grimy. A bird cannot take his clothes off, scrub his grubby skin from top to toe and get into a spanking clean outfit. But he has ways of his own for sprucing up his feathers. Sometimes he does the job with water and sometimes he uses dust that works somewhat like cleansing powder. As a rule, he finishes his primping by smoothing his feathers with a thin coat of glossy brilliantine.
He starts his cleaning by ruffling up his overlapping feathers and uses his beak to comb and smooth and polish them one by one. If he washes in a bird bath, he ruffles his feathers to shake out the extra water and fluffs them up to dry in the air. After all, the bird family has not invented towels. When a bird finishes a dust bath, he ruffles and shuffles his feathers to shake out the sandy talcum powder. The neat little person takes a complete bath every day and maybe a few small primpings after each meal.
Birds also have other reasons for fluffing their feathers. Their soft, light coats are very warm because pockets of air are trapped between the silky fringes of the overlapping feathers. This air is warmed by the warmth from his skin. More pockets of warm air and bigger ones make his coat warmer. So a bird often ruffles his feathers in winter weather to keep out the cold. Sometimes a bird tries feather fluffing to frighten his enemies. As a rule, he can escape by just flying out of reach. But some¬times he must stand and face his foe. This is a good time to look bigger and more fearsome than he really is. So he fluffs up his feathers so that they stand on end. His enemy takes another look. The bird is bigger than he thought it was maybe it would be wiser to slink away.
A bird feels very uncomfortable when he is not clean as a whistle. Besides, he cannot fly when his clothes are mussed and messy. His wings must pack up cushions of air to lift him aloft. To do this, his overlapping plumage must be smooth and stream¬lined. Mussy feathers would make holes in the airy flying cushions. A bird also feels handsome in his feathery outfit and he loves to be admired by his girl friend. Many male birds wear very guady outfits and ruffle their feathers to show off when they go courting.