We have been considering some facts about the migration of birds, and the question has been asked, “Why do they migrate?” There are two main reasons. One reason is that those summering in the north need to move away from soon-coming cold weather with short winter days providing very little sunshine.
While departure times from northern points usually follow close schedules, in some way that we cannot understand, migrating birds have been given ability by the Creator even to know about weather changes, long before our weathermen, and will advance their migration time to be gone before heavy storms move in.
Then, after about six months in the sunny south lands, the birds get restless and somehow sense that the ice and snow on ponds and streams of the north are melting. Days are becoming longer again, and suitable climate conditions for hatching and raising their young compel them to make the return trip northward.
The second main reason for their migrations is that food supplies are all-important. Again, they instinctively know that plenty of fresh, nourishing food will be waiting for them at the other end of their journey. For instance, as though anticipating the arrival of hungry birds from the south, aphids, caterpillars, grubs, mosquitoes, flies and other insects of the north make their appearance just in time for the travelers to benefit from this nourishing food, and there is plenty of it to last a long time! The same is true of new plant life springing up, providing additional food and nesting materials.
But after five or six months in the north, the appetites of the growing bird families have made the food supply more scarce, and shorter days and colder weather prevent it from being renewed. In contrast, southern lands have benefited by the birds’ absence, and new supplies will be awaiting their return in the fall.
Incidentally, in the Arctic areas there has been a general warming of the atmosphere in the past 40 or 50 years, resulting in many birds now migrating there for the summer months that did not go there before. Who told them about the improved climate? and how did they find the way there?
The answers explained above may well be accurate, but the source of the implanting of these instincts in so many varieties of birds can only come from the Creator, of whom the Bible says, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth” (2 Chronicles 16:9), and, “In whose hand is the soul [breath] of every living thing” (Job 12:1010In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind. (Job 12:10)).
(to be continued)
ML-10/07/2001