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Hi everyone, welcome back to Curious By Nature.
My name is Marjorie and today we're going to be joined by a special guest, Geoff Williamson,
who's going to help us learn about the seasonal migration of birds.
We've been seeing all kinds of wildlife around the Nature Museum, so let's see what Geoff can share with us.
So, we're going to start with the basics.
Where can you find birds? Where do they live?
Pretty much, birds are all around us.
They, you know, like us, they need food and shelter and they tend to be in the areas where they can get that.
A lot of birds, certainly, we see in trees.
We'll see out on the pond the ducks in the water.
I know a lot of the Canada geese, for instance, they sleep at night on the pond.
All right, Geoff, do you mind taking us for a walk around North Pond to see what kind of birds we can find?
I'd love to, it's a great place to look for birds.
So what exactly is migration?
Migration is basically population-wide movements of animals changing location,
and there are a wide variety of different kinds of migration.
You can think in terms of how far the birds go.
Some fly fairly short distances and some fly very long distances.
There are some birds that spend the summer months
up in the Arctic regions and they fly all the way down to close to the South Pole.
There are other birds that just kind of shift their location.
Say here, in Illinois, they may be with us up in the northern part of the state and they move down to the southern part of the state.
How do they know where to go when they migrate?
It turns out that there's a lot of complexity to it, but, fundamentally,
a lot of the birds are able to navigate by using the positions of the stars.
There's also evidence that birds are able to determine the direction to fly using the Earth's magnetic field,
and, to a great extent, a lot of it is just genetically programmed into the birds.
They just are born knowing where they're supposed to go.
How do they know when to migrate?
So part of the seasons changing is that the length of the day changes,
so as we're moving closer towards winter, the days are getting shorter and many birds pick up on this
and their cue that it's time to move south happens because of the length of the day.
Other birds are just working with their available food supply.
Birds, like geese, that like to have open water, move south when the water freezes up.
And, just in terms of where they're going to go when they need to fly,
is sometimes just part of their genetic knowledge.
All right, so if you're going birding for the first time,
what are some of the things that you need to know?
Well, so for observing birds, it's good to have binoculars, not necessary.
A lot of people are using cameras, I have a big camera with me,
but there's a lot of lightweight cameras that can help you capture a picture of the bird.
You're going out into the the birds' home, essentially, so you want to be a polite visitor and be quiet and kind to the birds.
That'll help you be able to observe them a little bit more closely.
When I see a bird and I'm trying to figure out what kind of bird it is that I'm looking at,
I use a lot of different kinds of information.
You know, certainly there's what the bird looks like,
and what the bird looks like can involve, what's the shape of its bill?
How long are its legs?
Does it have a lot of different kinds of markings on its feathers?
The size of the bird is important.
What's it doing? Is it swimming in the water?
Is it flying overhead?
Is it clinging to a side of the tree and pecking on the tree?
So, a lot of behavioral clues like that are important.
And how the bird sounds is also a very useful characteristic to discern different birds.
Different kinds of birds make different kinds of noises, and that's often an easy way to tell things apart.
A lot of times when I'm with people that are fairly new to bird watching,
they sometimes feel that there seems to be so much to know and to learn,
but I always remind them that they already know quite a bit.
You can tell what a crow--you know what a crow looks like.
You know what a duck looks like and if you are familiar with, say, the mallard duck
and you see another duck that you know is different from the mallard, okay that's a start.
I mean, that's knowledge that you can use and to begin your investigation to find out what other kind of duck that is.
And so knowing what a hawk is, knowing what a woodpecker is, knowing what a hummingbird is,
I think these are these are things that many of us already have in our repertoire,
in our knowledge set, and you just build from that.
And are there some special birding places in Chicago you can go see a lot of types of birds?
Almost any of the lakefront parks, this is especially true during the migratory seasons,
so that's certainly where I go to do a lot of my bird watching.
One of the great things about having a healthy bird population and natural areas around us
is that it really improves the quality of life for us as fellow inhabitants of the planet.
And I know that the days where I get a chance to get out and be in nature and see birds and see how beautiful they are,
it really connects me to the planet and improves my mood and my outlook and my mental health.
Thanks for sharing this information with us and for taking us out on a bird walk today.
Oh, you're very welcome, Marjorie.
It's been my pleasure.
That's our show for today and thank you so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed learning about bird migration, and thanks again to Geoff for spending some time with us today.
Be sure to leave any questions you have in the comments below,
and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
We'll see you back here next time on Curious By Nature.