Wisconsin School of the Air; Afield with Ranger Mac; 5

Was Gunson School of the air invites you to go afield with the ranger MC on today's program boys and girls. Ranger my next topic will be pointed southward. Here's your guide Ranger Mick. Hello boys and girls this is your day and what a day it is. So up and away the birds have gone or most of them have. They're like the Arabs who quietly fold their tents and silently steal away the sight of the first robin in the spring gets a headline in the newspapers. But the passing of the bird southward in the fall of goes by unheeded except by students and lovers of birds. We see the brilliance brushes of color on the landscape but we are unaware that these trees may be filled with many kinds of warblers alert calling to each other feeding and resting by day travelling by

night obeying an instinct that urges them onward. 20 30 40 50 miles a night. No chart or compass to guide them. Just trust where the instinct pointing them southward to the lands that keep the sun where their kind has gone for thousands of years before them. We noticed the return of birds in the spring because we have not seen them all render and their presence is a promise of sunny warm days to come but winter creeps in on us and the absence of birds is not missed and little thought is given to one of the greatest mysteries of the natural world. The passing of birds to the warm lands where food is abundant and temperature are is comfortable. Even in my advanced years

even now I like to lie on my back along about a need deep in ankle deep. Let us say in August and watch the purple Martin's cavort in the sky. Each one would fly in a wide circle mounting higher and higher until it becomes a mere speck in the blue and then down it would come to earth by a direct route. They are strengthening their wing muscles training themselves in the use of their wings getting ready for the great journey. They know is ahead. I used to wonder and I do still. Whether they look forward to this miracle journey with or with fear. Anyway all the young birds make this preparation for the long flight ahead of them. Purple martens are insect eaters. Why they leave in August 20

insects are still abundant is a mystery. It may be that the insects they like to feed on are getting scarce anyway. By September the 1st they are gone travelling by day to feed upon insects which they catch on the wing resting by night parsing for a day or more in places where food is most abundant. Then onward until they arrive at their winter home in Brazil or Venza we live 3000 miles away. Birds that feed on the wing like the Nighthawks chimney swifts purple Martin's hawks and swallows travel by day and feed as they travel then rest at night. But a great majority of birds travel by night. It seems remarkable that so many should select the night hours for travel because most birds appear to be almost helpless in

the dark. It may be that by traveling under cover of darkness the birds avoid their enemies. But there is another reason for this night traveling. It takes a great deal of energy to fly and food is digested very rapidly in the body of birds. Most active birds would die if they had to go longer than 24 hours without food. If they spent the daylight hours migrating instead of feeding and resting they would arrive at nightfall exhausted with no chance to get any food. This would mean death to a great many birds and so they spend the daylight hours feeding and resting and at nightfall they are ready to resume their journeys again. You must remember that most birds travel in migration in a leisurely manner. For instance it takes the

purple martin 35 to 40 days to get from Wisconsin to Venezuela. I know Rob one travels at an average of 23 miles a night. Some birds travel in loose formation like the robins blue birds and warblers some birds like the red winged blackbirds travel in close formation. These birds get together and in flocks and fly close formation over the countryside wheeling and veering then settling down in graceful curves on some Stubblefield to feed on the bushes and trees bordering on marsh to spend the night long before they start south where these birds get together in this manner and practice playing together learning patterns of flight and harmony of action as well as the language of the flock. It is all done so smoothly. It looks as though they were

attached to each other by strings or were playing follow the leader. Then they can and they can take their own good time in migrating southward because they went there in the areas along the Gulf of Mexico which is not far distant. Blue Birds spend the winter in the states bordering the Gulf also. Of course then our great perils in migration. One of them is the weather. One year storms and cold weather pervaded the Southland and blue birds were killed by the thousands. Their frozen body is repond everywhere that spring there were comparatively few blue birds to return to the land of their birth. The greatest migration flight of all birds is made by the arctic tern.

It is the champion globe trotter. It has more hours of daylight and sunshine in its life than any creature. It nests in the Arctic regions during the time the earth is tipped towards the sun and the sun never sets then it migrates to the Antarctic regions where the 24 hours of each day is again filled with daylight. Back and forth that swings like a president covering 25000 miles each year. But the traveling of the tiny hummingbird interests me the most. About this time maybe a little later at these midgets will launch out across the Gulf of Mexico straight to our Yucatan and Central America. I'm not on flights

nonstop flight. There are over 500 miles without food or rest. Then there are some birds that do not migrate among these are the ruffed grouse and the bob white the birds we have with us during the winter. The Blue Jays crows tree sparrows juncos goldfinches chickadees woodpeckers and Jews come to us from regions farther north. And while these same birds. Spend their summer with us. As a great many of them do as they do you know. These same birds go father south to spend the winter in the United States. Biological surveyed now called the Fish and Wildlife Service has banded birds for many years and has records of many hundreds of thousands of birds. In this way these

scientists have been able to determine the routes that birds take in migration. In general the routes follow the river courses and the mountain ranges southward northward in the spring. If you were to take out your geographies we would have to trace these roots briefly and hurriedly. Now route number one is from Nova Scotia following the area between the 50th and the 60th meridians southward across the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the groups of islands called the Lesser Antilles and then to the mainland of South America. It is a flight of twenty five hundred miles taken by water birds. Only if Storm overtakes them they just rest on the water. Route number two is is taken by land birds east of the

Alleghany Mountains. They follow the coastline of Florida then strike off eastward to the Bahamas then to Puerto Rico thence follow the Lesser Antilles to the mainland of South America. Birds that travel this route are never out of sight of land and have convenient resting and feeding places. Route number three is a more direct route off the coast of Florida to Cuba then to Jamaica and hence across the 500 miles of ocean to the mainland of South America. The babbling Kingbird very old Nighthawks take this route route number four is the great area between the Allegheny Mountains and the 100th meridian. This is the bread basket of our country. The Mississippi Valley.

More birds take this course. Going and coming more birds in kinds and numbers. Take this course and birds taking any other route. Rule number five is taken by many of the warblers instead of risking the long expanse of water of the Gulf of Mexico. They follow the coastline of Texas into Mexico then down into Central America. Route number six is the land route east of the Rocky mountains down into Mexico and Central America route number seven is another fly away on the east side of the Cascades following the land bordering the Pacific Ocean into Mexico and Central America. We can understand why scarcity of food in the north might cause the birds to travel south

where food is abundant and temperature is comfortable. But there must be some other reason than food supply and temperature to send them north again in the spring. It must be a homesickness or yearning to come back to the place of their birth there and have homes of their own to come back where there is room for a far Burd state in the south. There would be an overcrowding of birds. Nature is wise in sending them back where each pair can have a territory of its own. And when they return they are dressed in bright plumage dressed up for carting with songs in their throats. Back and forth swings this feathered pendulum a rather mysterious movement that causes the poet to write when he saw a bird in migration.

He who owned his own guides of the boundless sky advised certain flight in the long path that I must tread alone will guide my steps are right and so much what a day may or days be happy until we gather again for a trip a field and may the Great Spirit put sunshine in your heart today and for every moth heap much the familiar Indian farewell brings us to the end of another trip a field with a ranger Ranger Mack will be back next week to take you on another radio hike down the nature trail. This is the Wisconsin School of the air.