George Hall, age 11 , of Cloverdale,for his question:
How do birds know where to migrate?
The chubby, spikey billed woodcock is on his own soon after he is hatched, Through his childhood and teenage he leads a solitary life, not even mixing with members of his own family. Come fall, he rises into the air, swoops around in a few circles and makes a beeline for the Southland, Thousands of other solitary woodcocks follow the same route. They did not learn how, when or where to migrate from their parents or other relatives.
This strange, built in knowledge is called instinct and it is one of the many mysteries of migration, But the word instinct does not tell us very much. Too often it is used as a catch all word to write off the countless things we do not know about this luxury planet of ours. However, the word instinct does not stop the people who are truly and properly curious from trying to find a better answer.
When it comes to solving the mysteries of bird migration, this calls for a tremendous amount of patience and world wide detective work. For every year, billions of birds migrate between their summer and winter w homes and their migration routes traverse the globe.
Even you may help in this world wide fob. Organizations such as the Audubon Society band thousands of birds every year and set them free. The bands bear dates and serial numbers. If you ever find such a bird trapped or hurt, report his numbers to the Audubon Society. From countless bits of information of this sort we can ,build up a picture of where and when these billions of birds travel.
A good deal of this work has already been done. We know that the summer and winter homes of the amazing Arctic tern are in the Arctic and the Antarctic Circles. His migratory travels take him over about 24,000 miles every year. The travels of the pretty bobolink tell another amazing story.
The bobolink is a seed eater and when the settlers first came his summer home was in New England and the eastern provinces of Canada. When the settlers moved westwards the bobolink went with them to feed on their seeds. He now goes as far west as the Rockies, Yet come fall, he returns to Brazil. But not in a direct line south through Arizona and Mexico. He retraces the path by which his ancestors migrated. He goes east to Florida then to Cuba and across miles of open sea.
Some experts have offered some suggestions to explain how birds knoor where to migrate. Some say they may follow magnetic fields above the earths surface. Some say that the length of daylight may affect certain glands in the bodies. Maybe these and other factors play a part. But the truth of the matter is, we do not yet understand all about it.