Migration

Migration is a regular, repeated return journey, usually over long distances.  Usually annually of just once in a lifetime. Homing is a return journey to a home base after searching for food or mates. Migration and homing are very similar in the way that it is a journey. However, they are also different because migration is moving from one place to another and then returning to the first place.  Homing is when you’re returning home from something like a scouting trip/scavenging trip.

It is usually birds or fish migrating somewhere, or homing, and when they do this they use navigation to find their way. There are different ways of navigation that these animals use. One of way of navigation is star navigation. Using the stars, birds are able to find their ways home/find their destination. They do this through recognizing groups of stars or constellations, which are indicators that they are going the right way, and fly in that direction. Another way of navigation used are visual cues. For example, motorways are visual cues used by birds to navigate. Other visual cues could be trees. The disadvantage with this, however, is that with things like deforestation taking away trees, birds will be disadvantaged when migrating because a visual cue they once used for navigation is no longer there.

The Bar-tailed godwit is a bird who migrates from NZ to places like China, or from Alaska to China. These birds are known for taking the longest non-stop migration flights. This is due to the fact that they when migrating, the pass over the ocean which has no resting places to offer the birds, and so they have no choice but to fly until they reach their destination.