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Migration: The Incredible Journey

© Glenda Gibbons

It's a moment of truth for every avid birdwatcher in the late summer and early fall. One morning you walk outside, and all you hear is silence in the trees. The melodious songs that filled the air on summer mornings are gone. The area is strangely quiet. For me, this brings on an extreme depression. The songs of buntings, tanagers, goldfinches, and other brilliantly colored birds that begin my summer days like beloved books, are gone for the season. While I stay here and prepare for the cold winter, my little winged friends are skimming across the flyways that have come to reveal a pattern of migration which is studied and monitored by other bird lovers and scientists the world over.

Those of us who live in the northern and Midwest United States, tend to think of our bird friends as living "here" in the summer. In truth, it's the opposite way around. Most birds fly to the northern hemisphere to breed, and then by summer's end, the fledglings are ready to fly to the southern hemisphere on their own.

So...What Starts this Biological Clock...and Why?

We can find out a lot about migration just by watching our own backyards. I have a barn full of swallows in the summer that are simply gone one morning in late September. Birds migrate southward to find more food that has not succumbed to the cooler weather. One would think then, that it's the lack of food that triggers the migratory instinct. In actuality, what the cooler weather does trigger is the bird's natural tendency to gain weight and store large reserves of body fat that will sustain it through the long journey south. It isn't unusual for a small bird such as a goldfinch to double its body weight. While some birds travel long distances non-stop to their wintering grounds in the neotropical areas of the United States, Mexico, and Central America, there are others that must make stops along the way to help replenish the fat reserves that are used during the laborious and tedious flight.

It's hard to believe that birds are capable of planning their voyage, but it is true. The conditions must be right, and the bird is vigilantly on the watch. When the winds are strong, and favor the bird's ultimate direction, it will begin its long journey. Sometimes it will stop at predetermined wooded areas, and sometimes birds travel without stopping at all. Birds migrate both during the day and night.

Mississippi flyway covers the longest distance

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