This is my contribution to the Tuesday Photo Challenge – Travel.
As it’s spring and we are seeing a few summer migrants on their way north for the summer my idea for this challenge was bird migration. I have a few species in my files that make very impressive migrations.
So I thought a small selection of birds that are part way through their long distance migrations.
This is an adult White-crowned Sparrow with an immature White-crowned Sparrow in the background. These birds are on autumn migration and were photographed in my yard. The immature bird would have hatched from an egg in northern Canada in the summer. Some White-crowned Sparrows breed as far north as the edge of the tree line in Arctic Canada and some will winter as far south as central Mexico.
This is a female Northern Wheatear on autumn migration. Photographed on the bank of Hurleston Reservoir near Nantwich in southern Cheshire, England. This bird will have spent the summer in either Greenland or Arctic Canada. It has crossed the Atlantic Ocean either by flying directly to Britain or by travelling via Iceland. After resting and feeding on the reservoir bank for a while it will continue its migration to spend the winter in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This is a juvenile Red Knot on autumn migration. Photographed on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario at sunrise. This bird will have hatched from an egg in the Canadian Arctic in the summer. After feeding and resting it will continue to head south to spend the winter on the southern tip of South America. That’s 15,000 kilometers or 9,000 miles. One bird, banded (ringed) in South America in 1995 was recorded in the Canadian Arctic in 2014 by which time its total flight distance exceeded the distance to the moon. There’s more information on B95, nicknamed Moonbird here.
