How do birds decide who takes the lead in flight?

The Tao. A hummingbird will travel over 450 miles of water with a 20 mile an hour headwind (with more than 20 hours of travel time) to make it to their favorite breeding grounds. They arrive within feet of their destination year after year.
Just don’t tell the atheists. They believe it’s their enormous brains .

For these kind of birds that are simply no leader in their group. Each of them has the same will and need. They move and live together in a group only to avoid/confuse predators(though they’re social).

If you’re willing to wade through the science, here’s an interesting bit of research. The gist is that, as @Doctor_D says, there is no leader; the flocks behave in a way analogous to neural networks, with each individual’s behavior correlated to the flock as a whole regardless of the scale of the flock. The flock appears to form an emergent collective mind. In other words, as @SeventhSense says, it’s the Tao.

The researchers note that this form of organization enables the flock to respond instantly to predation threats or other environmental stimuli from any quarter, in ways that it couldn’t if there were a “top down” organizational structure.

Harp to the rescue, again!

@Harp
Interesting study.
Not nearly as interesting as watching paint dry but better than American Idol.~
I’ll have to imagine they found something conclusive.

@SeventhSense In a nutshell, it proves that birds aren’t Democrats.

@Harp
That was my guess.
I’ve always found geese a tad conservative anyway.

They play “rock, paper, scissors”!!

Actually if they have an emergent collective mind they don’t reflect any political party.