Draft 4/2

For my groups proposal we are looking at ways to bring in more migrating birds to the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. I had no idea how many kinds of birds migrate through Massachusetts. There are so many birds that go south for the winter time and return up north to breed during the spring and summer. This behavior makes a lot of sense because they go to a warmer climate where more resources are available during the winter. For species that migrate up north the warmer climates will become too much for them and they will return up north for a more mild summer and now they will have access to all the resources they need once again. Humans used to do similar migrations until we started having access to anything that we need at any point in the world. If birds had everything that they need anywhere they want it they would never chose to migrate, I don’t think that any species would. I have heard about migration before just from ecology and general biology courses but we never broke down the extent of which birds migrate. Some species travel for thousands of miles and they always know how to retrace the routes that they do. It really is just incredible that birds can travel so precisely without a map.