Heather Atkins., age 12, Ottawa, Ont., for her question;
How do migrating birds know their way?
Nature, it seems, likes us to be curious. For proper curiosity is usually rewarded. However, Mother Nature does not make it easy for us. She holds onto her secrets with might and main. There are many, many questions to which we do not know the answers. This is one of them.
Every year we are sad to see the birds fly south, and every year we rejoice to see them come back. We; know a good deal about whore they go and a good deal about why they go. But how they manage to find their way to and fro nobody knows, yet.
Every year we learn of new miracles performed by migrating birds. The little Arctic tern flies all the way from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle and back. The midget humming bird flies 500 miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico. and a family of killdeers will come back to the same corner of the same meadow year after year. No one knows how these feathered darlings know what to do.