Data from: Hummingbirds control hovering flight by stabilizing visual motion

Relatively little is known about how sensory information is used for
controlling flight in birds. A powerful method is to immerse an animal in
a dynamic virtual reality environment to examine behavioral responses.
Here, we investigated the role of vision during free-flight hovering in
hummingbirds to determine how optic flow—image movement across the
retina—is used to control body position. We filmed hummingbirds hovering
in front of a projection screen with the prediction that projecting moving
patterns would disrupt hovering stability but stationary patterns would
allow the hummingbird to stabilize position. When hovering in the presence
of moving gratings and spirals, hummingbirds lost positional stability and
responded to the specific orientation of the moving visual stimulus. There
was no loss of stability with stationary versions of the same stimulus
patterns. When exposed to a single stimulus many times or to a weakened
stimulus that combined a moving spiral with a stationary checkerboard, the
response to looming motion declined. However, even minimal visual motion
was sufficient to cause a loss of positional stability despite prominent
stationary features. Collectively, these experiments demonstrate that
hummingbirds control hovering position by stabilizing motions in their
visual field. The high sensitivity and persistence of this disruptive
response is surprising, given that the hummingbird brain is highly
specialized for sensory processing and spatial mapping, providing other
potential mechanisms for controlling position.