Birds' Migration Distance

The distances that birds migrate vary greatly with the species. Some birds may migrate southward only a few miles; others travel farther, to the Southern States; and over a hundred species leave the United States. Some winter in Central America, some in the northern part of South America, and still others in the southern part of South America. Some warbiers which nest in Alaska probably travel to Brazil, a distance of seven thousand miles.

Golden plover. The two most noted travelers among birds are the golden plover and the Arctic tern. The golden plover nests along the Arctic coast of North America. It then proceeds to Labrador and Nova Scotia, and from here it may make a continuous flight, in pleasant weather, of twentyfour hundred miles, to the coast of South America. It then passes on to Argentina, where it spends the winter. Ft returns north by a different route, passing along the western part of South America and through the United States by the Mississippi Valley, and thence to the northern coast of North America, its nesting-site, a distance of eight thousand miles from its winter home.

Arctic tern. The Arctic tern has even a longer range of travel than the golden plover. Some of these birds breed along the Arctic coast of North America, a nest having been found within seven and a half degrees of the North Pole. Its winter home is eleven thousand miles away, within the Antarctic Cirde, within sixteen degrees of the South Pole. Thus the bird flies almost from pole to pole, twice a year, a journey of twenty-two thousand miles, a distance nearly equal to the earth’s circumference. Mr. W. W. Cooke points out that, as a result of being near the poles for so much of the year, it lives for about eight months in regions of perpetual sunshine, and during the rest of the year its days are much longer than its nights. It might well be called the bird of sunshine.