SEEING THE LIGHT

OF all the marvels of the living world, few are as astonishing as the annual migrations of birds. The idea that a tiny songbird, weighing less than half an ounce, can travel thousands of miles under its own power year after year is almost too great for the human mind to comprehend. The precise rhythm of these comings and goings has been noted as early as the writing of the Old Testament, when the prophet Jeremiah alluded to the “appointed times” of the “stork in the heavens.”

Although humans have long observed that birds appear and reappear at certain times of year, we haven’t always understood how it happens. Aristotle surmised that swallows hibernated in the ground, an idea that would persist into modern times. He also thought that certain birds annually transformed from one species to another. It wasn’t until the early 19th century, when a White Stork — likely the very same species Jeremiah wrote about thousands of years earlier — was found in what is now Germany