This coming Saturday marks World Migratory Bird Day, a time to turn our binoculars skywards and marvel at the globe-trotting habits of feathered Minnesotans, according to the University of Minnesota experts. Steve Kolbe of the university's Natural Resources Research Institute dished on the details of these winged wonders, noting the significant variety of habitats from prairie to boreal forest make Minnesota a veritable pit stop for avian commuters.
From the sky highways above Minnesota, flocks of geese and warblers, to hawks making their grand entrance, it's a spectacle unlike any other—especially since a mild winter pushed migration schedules up the calendar this year, as Kolbe told the University of Minnesota. "Many southern states see species such as warblers only during spring and fall migration, but in Minnesota we get to enjoy them all summer long!" Kolbe revealed, laying out the schedule from the march of the robins to the November-December finale studded with winter-tough finches.
Peering into the mysteries of migratory routes is more mind-bending than just following a birdy road map. These routes are a tangle of flight paths where a winged jet-setter could lounge along the Gulf of Mexico in winter, only to summer in the rural havens of Alaska or Hudson Bay. Kolbe shared that while some feathery friends hightail it across the night using stars and nature's very own navigation tools—yes, we're talking magnetic fields and polarized light fields—others prefer a scenic day trip guided by earthly landscapes like river valleys and lake shorelines.
Sure, these birds are adaptable high-flyers, but they're not unfazed by the condos and cul-de-sacs we keep plunking down in their pit stops. "If a bird is unable to find enough suitable stopover habitat, it will be unable to refuel and make another migratory leap" Kolbe warned, emphasizing the crunch for quality rest stops free of invasive plant party crashers, the University of Minnesota reported. And when Minnesota's weather decides to throw snowballs instead of sunshine? These birds aren't shy about a strategic retreat southward until Mother Nature gets her act together again.
Research is hardly for the birds at the Avian Ecology Lab where Kolbe and crew are deploying next-gen tech to snoop on migratory routes and vacation spots of Minnesota's winged tourists—think geolocators and the Motus Wildlife Tracking System that's snaring data on bird movement from Maryland to British Columbia. It's all in a day's work: preserving the biodiversity and hatching conservation plans to keep Minnesota's skies busy with birds for years to come.
