Bird migration

Bird migration is a seasonal movement of some birds between breeding and wintering grounds that occurs twice a year. It is typically from north to south or from south to north. Migration is inherently risky, due to predation and mortality.

The Arctic tern holds the long-distance migration record for birds, travelling between Arctic breeding grounds and the Antarctic each year. Some species of tubenoses, such as albatrosses, circle the Earth, flying over the southern oceans, while others such as Manx shearwaters migrate 14,000 km (8,700 mi) between their northern breeding grounds and the southern ocean. Shorter migrations are common, while longer ones are not. The shorter migrations include altitudinal migrations on mountains, including the Andes and Himalayas.

The timing of migration seems to be controlled primarily by changes in day length. Migrating birds navigate using celestial cues from the Sun and stars, the Earth's magnetic field, and mental maps.

In the Pacific, traditional land-finding techniques used by Micronesians and Polynesians suggest that bird migration was observed and interpreted for more than 3,000 years. In Samoan tradition, for example, Tagaloa sent his daughter Sina to Earth in the form of a bird, Tuli, to find dry land, the word tuli referring specifically to land-finding waders, often to the Pacific golden plover.

Writings of ancient Greeks recognized the seasonal comings and goings of birds. Aristotle recorded that cranes traveled from the steppes of Scythia to marshes at the headwaters of the Nile, an observation repeated by Pliny the Elder in his Historia Naturalis. Aristotle, however, suggested that swallows and other birds hibernated. This belief persisted as late as 1878 when Elliott Coues listed the titles of no fewer than 182 papers dealing with the hibernation of swallows. Even the "highly observant" Gilbert White, in his posthumously published 1789 The Natural History of Selborne, quoted a man's story about swallows being found in a chalk cliff collapse "while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone", though the man denied being an eyewitness. However, he writes that "as to swallows being found in a torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight or any part of this country, I never heard any such account worth attending to", and that if early swallows "happen to find frost and snow they immediately withdraw for a time—a circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than migration", since he doubts they would "return for a week or two to warmer latitudes". Only at the end of the eighteenth century was migration accepted as an explanation for the winter disappearance of birds from northern climes. Thomas Bewick's A History of British Birds (Volume 1, 1797) mentions a report from "a very intelligent master of a vessel" who, "between the islands of Menorca and Majorca, saw great numbers of Swallows flying northward", and states the situation in Britain as follows:

Swallows frequently roost at night, after they begin to congregate, by the sides of rivers and pools, from which circumstance it has been erroneously supposed that they retire into the water.

— Bewick

Bewick then describes an experiment that succeeded in keeping swallows alive in Britain for several years, where they remained warm and dry through the winters. He concludes: