A flock of barnacle geese during autumn migration
Examples of long-distance bird migration routes

Bird migration is a seasonal movement of some birds between breeding and wintering grounds that occurs twice a year. It is typically between northern and southern regions. Migration carries inherent risks, including predation and other hazards en route.

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.

Historical views

Minoan fresco of swallows in springtime at Akrotiri, c. 1500 BC

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.[1]

Writings of ancient Greeks recognized the seasonal comings and goings of birds.[2] Aristotle recorded that cranes travelled from the steppes of Scythia to marshes at the headwaters of the Nile, an observation repeated by Pliny the Elder in his Historia Naturalis.[2] 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"[3] 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.[4] 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",[4] 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".[5] Only at the end of the eighteenth century was migration accepted as an explanation for the winter disappearance of birds from northern climes.[2] 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",[6] and states the situation in Britain as follows:

The Rostocker Pfeilstorch, found in 1822, demonstrated that birds migrated rather than hibernating or changing form in winter.

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:

These experiments have since been amply confirmed by ... M. Natterer, of Vienna ... and the result clearly proves, what is in fact now admitted on all hands, that Swallows do not in any material instance differ from other birds in their nature and propensities [for life in the air]; but that they leave us when this country can no longer furnish them with a supply of their proper and natural food ...

— Bewick[8]

In 1822, a white stork was found in the German state of Mecklenburg with an arrow made from central African hardwood, which provided some of the earliest evidence of long-distance stork migration.[9][10][11][12] This bird was referred to as a Pfeilstorch, German for 'arrow stork'.[11]