Following the Autumn Migration

Each autumn, as the light softens and the first cold nights arrive, something ancient stirs in millions of birds. Almost overnight the skies fill with movement as swallows, warblers, and geese begin the long journey south. Some will cross entire oceans without landing, navigating by the stars, the setting sun, and a magnetic sense we are only beginning to understand.

Standing on a headland at first light during the migration is one of nature's great free spectacles. Waves of small birds pour overhead, pausing in the hedgerows to feed before pressing on. A single willow warbler weighing less than a two-pound coin may travel from a northern woodland all the way to sub-Saharan Africa and back again the following spring, guided home to the very same tree it left. The more we learn about these journeys, the more astonishing it becomes that creatures so small carry maps so vast inside them.