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June Feature: Birds
From the sight of thousands of shorebirds wheeling in perfectly synchronized flight over a marsh, to the soft calling of millions of song-birds as they fly overhead on an autumn night, or the ghostly silhouettes of geese seen passing across a full moon, there are few natural spectacles on Earth that match the mass migration of birds. Not all birds migrate, but those that do perform incredible feats of physical endurance and global navigation. The aim of most migratory birds is to find safe nesting sites and the best source of food for the summer breeding season, and then to return to a warmer, more hospitable habitat to over-winter. Most birds make their first migration, often thousands of miles long, just weeks after they have hatched. The mystery of how birds find their way to ancestral wintering spots halfway across the globe and back again, has still not been fully solved by scientists. Birds appear to use many clues to navigate, including the sun, the stars, and an internal biological magnetic compass.
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