Migration: A Natural Instinct

14 Migration: A Natural Instinct Each spring, as the winter snows are melting, a familiar sound is heard in the skies over Canada. It's the loud honking of geese heading to their summer breeding grounds. A few months later, winter approaches, and the lakes begin to freeze. The skies are once again filled with the sound of geese, this time heading in the other direction. They are on their way south to their warm wintering grounds. This twice-a-year migration of huge flocks of Canada geese is mysterious and little understood. Science has no explanation for why, or even how, it happens. Life in the natural world is filled with many wonders like this. Much of what we see in nature can be easily explained. There are some things, however, that science can observe and record, but cannot really understand. Canada geese spend the winter in the warm climates of the southern United States and Mexico, where food is plentiful. As winter ends in Canada, something tells them it's time to begin their flight north, where they will spend the summer in the plentiful Arctic region of their birth.

When they get there, they build their nests, lay eggs, and raise a new family. Adult Canada geese mate for life. One male and one female spend about twenty years together and raise an average of 75 chicks over their lifetime. Each of these chicks comes into the world “ hard-wired" with this amazing ability to find its way home. At the end of summer, they gather in flocks containing thousands of birds, and return south following the same route that they and their ancestors have been following for thousands of generations. How do they find their way? What signals lead them as they fly at speeds of 80 kilometres an hour for fifteen hours a day? How do they know winter is over in Canada? These are just some of the questions that can't be fully answered by current research on migration and the homing instinct. They are just some of nature's miracles that humans cannot understand.