Hitching A Ride On The Jetstream

The little blackpoll warbler weighs only three-quarters of an ounce! Yet in the fall it travels from Alaska to the eastern coast of Canada or New England, where it stops over and gorges on food, stores up fat and then waits for cold weather to arrive.

When the cold comes, the tiny bird heads south. In its little mind, it is planning to go to South America, but it gets there by first going towards Africa!

Out over the Atlantic Ocean it flies at an altitude of up to 20,000 feet in the air! How can it keep its warmth at such a height? The little wings must beat constantly-yet there is very little oxygen! In addition, at such high altitudes it is more difficult for beating wings to make progress-there is so little air for them to push against!

At some point in its travels, it encounters a wind blowing toward South America; it then turns and heads toward that continent. That prevailing wind tends to be found only at such great heights, but who told that to the little bird?

This journey is about 2,400 miles over trackless seas, and requires about 4 days and nights of constant flying. No one is there to tell the bird where to go, the height at which to fly, or where to turn. No one is there to feed its tiny three-fourth’s ounce body during the trip. It dare not land on the water. Its tiny brain must guide it by day by the sun moving across the sky, and at night by the stars double navigation! And even when the sky is cloudy it uses an as yet unknown method of navigation to guide it precisely to it’s goal.

it seems beyond comprehension, yet the little bird does it. And its offspring takes the same trip, without ever having been taught the route or shown any road maps!

the brilliant cunningness of the random happenstance of birth defects (evolution) never ceases to amaze me.