Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS

Origins of Bird Migration

The origin, or perhaps better the origins, of this habit or instinct of bird migration is exceedingly obscure. Many theories have been advanced to account for it, but perhaps none has yet been offered that explains satisfactorily all its multitudinous phases.

For instance, it has been suggested that migration is the result of the development or acquirement of the power of flight. That flight has had much to do in making long extended migrations easily possible no one can deny, but that it has been the cause is not logically evident, for certain mammals, as the bison and antelope, are to a limited extent migratory, and certain flightless birds, as the Penguins and the Great Auks, are strictly so, or rather were in the case of the latter species which is now extinct

According to Mr. F. M. Chapman ("Bird Studies with a Camera,”p. 194)”the desire for seclusion during the breeding season”is a”good and sufficient cause for the origin of bird migration.”He applies this theory especially to birds nesting in colonies in secluded spots, as the Ipswich Sparrow, which is known to nest only on Sable Island, off the Nova Scotia coast, the Gannets (Sula bassana), which nest in the western hemisphere only on three islets in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Terns on Muskeget and Penikese, and the Brown Pelicans of the Indian River region of eastern Florida.

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