Songbird Journeys...

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Songbird Journeys:

Four Seasons

in the Lives of

Migratory Birds

by Miyoko Chu

Walker & Company Books, 2006

Early in Miyoko Chu’s breathtaking book, she tells the story of Richard Graber, an ornithologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, who attached a tiny radio transmitter to the back of a grey-cheeked thrush and followed its flight 400 miles to the north and east one evening in a small plane. The first leg took Graber from central Illinois to the southern outskirts of Chicago before he lost the signal. But by tracing the bird’s direction and speed – an impressive 50 mph – on an air chart, he was able to calculate that it would be flying over Evanston (near where I live) at 10:37 p.m. It was. Then, without stopping to rest, the thrush ventured over the dark waters of Lake Michigan to fly another 250 miles, straight into a thunderstorm. Graber and his pilot were forced to stop to refuel in Green Bay, Wisconsin. But by 2:30 a.m., they rendezvoused with the bird once more over Sturgeon Bay as it headed towards Canada. That was 40 years ago, and Graber, wracked by guilt for adding 3 grams of weight to such a brave and tireless traveler, vowed never again to add that kind of burden to a bird in the name of science. It was the right vow. But I’m glad he did it. Standing on the still-frozen sand by the water’s edge in the Spring, looking up into the darkness and knowing that a great and timeless drama is unfolding overhead -- it is beyond words.

The technology of tracking these tiny migrants has improved tremendously. Among other things, they show up on Doppler radar. They can also be tracked by song. Researchers Bill Evans and Michael O’Brien, in collaboration with computer programmers at Cornell University, have come up with software capable of filtering out the background noise of katydids and raindrops, which can analyze recordings in a fraction of the time it would take human listeners. About three-dozen recording stations are now set up across the country.

Yet for all the mysteries science has solved, from details of how songbirds birds navigate to what makes some species so colorful (basically, you are what you eat), there is still so much more to know. The big question is whether there is still enough time to know it. Chu recounts

a long list of bird threats, from diseases to habitat loss (imagine flying thousands of miles only to find your summer home has been turned into a parking lot, or that your favorite winter forest has been slashed and burned). Although it is hard to believe that these descendants

of dinosaurs will ever be completely wiped out, the magnitude of losses over the last 50 years

is sobering. 

Chu, an ornithologist at Cornell, includes information -- with lots of web-links -- about migration hotspots, citizen-science projects, and a reference bibliography at the back the book.

– j.a.g.