Could you migrate like a songbird?

What can you do purely from instinct? Catch yourself when you’re about to trip? Chew your food? I’m sure you can think of a few things. Maybe you have a very strong ‘intuition’. But do you think it would be strong enough to get you through the following scenario?

I drop you off in the middle of the vast boreal forest. I take your smart phone and wallet and give you just enough rations to survive. You were blindfolded on the way in, so you have no idea where you are, and you’re completely on your own. Using nothing but your ‘intuition’, do you think you could get all the way to northeastern South America? Under your own power—no hitchhiking! There are only a few precious weeks of moderate weather before brutal cold sets in. How do you think you’d fare?

People often ask us if adult birds have to show babies the way to the wintering grounds. We are constantly catching flocks of birds at CFMS made up entirely of very young birds (born this year). There are no ‘leaders’ in this group, no elders who have made the journey before. Just a bunch of 2-month-old warblers and sparrows.

So... how do they do it?! These birds are equipped with a slew of instincts and sensitivities that allow them to find their way to the wintering grounds completely on their own. I imagine it would feel like following an intuition. They have the ability to ‘see’ Earth’s magnetic field because of magnetite in their brains—so they can tell north from south. They also register changes in the photoperiod (the amount of light in a day) in order to know how to time their migration. Songbirds can see polarized light, and some birds use the sun and stars to navigate. They may eventually learn landmarks—but they probably don’t know them on their very first migration. They also have to know to fuel up before their journey, and somehow most of them know to make their big flights at night. There may be a social element to this, as most of these birds are traveling in groups, but it isn’t the case that some birds must already know the way. The process is largely innate, instinctual. No one even teaches the birds how make sense of the instincts. They just know!

Of course this isn’t true for ALL birds—Whooping Cranes are famous for following a fake Whooping Crane in order to learn their migration route. Basically, it seems every species has their own little tricks for getting from one place to another—the task of crossing the globe twice a year is enormous and complicated. There is no quick answer! And it’s definitely not fully understood yet.

Many birds are so good at the process that they can fly all the way from Alaska to South America and back to Alaska—and wind up in exactly the same breeding territory they used the previous year. That is a lot of information to process and remember... And they don’t even get to take notes!

If you’re interested in learning more about the magic of avian migration, I recommend the book Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul. And if you’re interested in the process of emergence (social intelligence without coordinated leaders), there’s a classic Radiolab episode about that.

PS—I promise I won’t leave you stranded in the boreal forest. ...without your smartphone. ;)

~Laura

P.S.S. We closed early today due to high wind and rain.