Bird Migration Mysteries

Bird Migration: Billions of birds travel seasonally between breeding and wintering grounds, crossing deserts, mountains and open oceans with no map. Scientists are still unraveling how they combine star patterns, the sun, smell, landmarks and Earth's magnetic field to find their way, and tiny trackers keep revealing journeys no one expected.

Bar tailed Godwit: In 2022, a young male tracked by satellite flew about 13,500 kilometers from Alaska to Tasmania in 11 days without stopping to eat, drink or rest. It set the record for the longest known nonstop bird flight.

Arctic Tern: Geolocators on terns from Greenland revealed zigzag routes totaling more than 70,000 kilometers a year between the Arctic and Antarctic. Over a long life, one bird can travel the distance of several trips to the Moon.

Common Swift: A 2016 Swedish study found that swifts can stay in the air for up to ten months straight during their nonbreeding season. They eat, drink and apparently even sleep on the wing.

Blackpoll Warbler: This 12 gram songbird flies from New England and Canada out over the Atlantic toward South America. Tracking showed nonstop flights of up to roughly three days, covering over 2,000 kilometers.

Ruby throated Hummingbird: Weighing about three grams, many of these birds fly across the Gulf of Mexico, roughly 500 miles, in a single push. They double their body weight beforehand to fuel the crossing.

Bar headed Goose: These geese cross the Himalayas on their way to India. In a 2015 experiment, researchers trained geese to fly in a wind tunnel under oxygen levels matching altitudes near 9,000 meters, showing the species is built for extreme heights.

Great Snipe: In 2011, Swedish researchers tracked these shorebirds flying about 6,800 kilometers nonstop from Sweden to sub Saharan Africa. Some averaged speeds near 97 kilometers per hour for days.

Common Cuckoo: Young cuckoos are raised by foster parents and never meet their real parents. Months later they still fly alone to central Africa, guided by an inherited migration program.

European Robin: These birds appear to sense Earth's magnetic field through light sensitive proteins in their eyes called cryptochromes. Experiments in Germany found that weak radio frequency noise could disrupt their orientation, hinting that quantum effects may be involved.

Manx Shearwater: In 1952, one of these seabirds was taken from Wales and released in Boston. It flew back across the Atlantic in about 12 and a half days, covering roughly 5,000 kilometers without any known landmarks.

Wisdom the Albatross: This Laysan albatross on Midway Atoll was first banded in 1956 by biologist Chandler Robbins. She has been seen raising chicks past age 70, and she has likely flown millions of miles over her life.

Whooping Crane: By the 1940s only about 20 whooping cranes were left. In 2001, a project used ultralight aircraft to lead captive raised chicks along a new migration route from Wisconsin to Florida.

Sooty Shearwater: Tagging in the early 2000s revealed figure eight loops around the Pacific of about 64,000 kilometers each year. These birds travel from New Zealand to Alaska and Japan and back.

Eleonora's Falcon: This Mediterranean raptor delays breeding until late summer so its chicks hatch when songbirds migrate past. It winters in Madagascar, completing a journey of several thousand kilometers.

Amur Falcon: These small raptors migrate from Siberia and northern China across India and the Indian Ocean to southern Africa, a round trip of about 22,000 kilometers. In the Indian village of Pangti, tens of thousands were once netted each autumn before locals turned to protecting them.

Northern Wheatear: Wheatears that breed in Alaska fly some 14,500 kilometers to winter in sub Saharan Africa. It is among the longest known migrations of any songbird.

Moonbird B95: A red knot banded in 1995 in Argentina was still being seen two decades later. Its travels between Tierra del Fuego and the Arctic added up to roughly the distance to the Moon and halfway back.

Pfeilstorch: In 1822 a white stork landed in Klutz, Germany, with a central African hunting spear through its neck. The find gave early proof that birds fly to Africa in winter and did not vanish or hibernate.

Aristotle: The Greek philosopher wrote that swallows hibernate in holes and that redstarts turn into robins in winter. These ideas persisted for roughly two thousand years before migration was widely accepted.

Bristle thighed Curlew: This Alaska breeder winters on remote Pacific islands thousands of kilometers away. During its winter molt it sheds flight feathers all at once and becomes flightless for weeks.

Indigo Bunting: In the 1960s, Stephen Emlen showed that these songbirds learn the pattern of stars rotating around the North Star. Birds raised under a planetarium sky with a different rotation center oriented accordingly.

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary: Hunters once shot thousands of migrating hawks from this Pennsylvania ridge. In 1934 conservationist Rosalie Edge bought the land, creating the world's first refuge for birds of prey.

Veracruz River of Raptors: Each autumn, millions of hawks, kites and vultures funnel through a narrow coastal corridor in Mexico between mountains and sea. It is considered the greatest raptor migration on Earth.

John James Audubon: In 1804 he tied silver thread to the legs of Eastern Phoebe nestlings in Pennsylvania. The next spring some returned to the same place, in what is considered the first bird banding experiment in North America.