Column: Birds and Their Wildest Dreams

BOOTHBAY REGISTER • June 17, 2026

There are species that vocalize primarily at night (owls, whip-poor-wills). But there are a few species that, while mostly day time singers, will also sing at night. Mockingbirds are one of the better-known species that sometimes do this. Researchers have now well-documented that birds dream. Much new research on this topic has been coming from a group called the Avian Sleep Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence. They’ve found, for example, that birds have both REM and non-REM sleep and that the parts of a pigeon’s brain that process signals related to flying were sometimes activated during sleep. Others have found that, in some songbirds, the muscles used in singing are active during sleep, indicating that the birds were dreaming of singing in their sleep. ~ Jeffrey V. Wells and Allison Childs Wells