Background for Teachers

Note: This Audubon Adventures topic focuses on the Bird Migration Explorer, the digital tool created by Audubon and its partners to visually document the migration journeys of North American birds. For additional background on bird migration, please read the Background for Teachers essay for the topic “Birds on the Move,” which covers bird migration in general. That Audubon Adventures unit is referred to as you and your students engage with the Bird Migration Explorer and the related classroom activity.

Humans have long been captivated by migratory birds, awed by the animals’ biannual treks between their breeding and wintering grounds. The Bird Migration Explorer is a tool that allows anyone to follow hundreds of species on their epic migratory journeys. Users can pore over the movements of individual species, discover the birds that spend time at a specific location, and learn about the challenges these far-flying creatures face. The Explorer was created by Audubon and nine founding partners using science contributed by hundreds of researchers and institutions. It paints the most complete picture ever of the journeys of 458 bird species that breed in the United States and Canada.

The Explorer homepage features a colorful map composed of routes of more than 9,300 birds captured by tracking devices and shared by scientists across the Western Hemisphere. As Melanie Smith, program director for the project, says, “You can see how birds trace the outlines of continents, rivers, lakes, mountain ridges.” The Explorer will help conservationists who are seeking to identify and protect the places migratory birds need as well as members of the public who are curious about their seasonal neighborhood visitors. For educators like you, it is a powerful way to help students understand migration through classroom participation as well as self-directed explorations in which they follow their curiosity, pose questions, analyze data, test hypotheses, and identify answers. These are the hallmarks of the work scientists do. In other words, the Explorer offers a STEM-infused approach to learning that will serve students well throughout their time in school and in their lives beyond as engaged and informed members of society.

Which Birds, Where, and When

When you choose a species in the Explorer, you can see an animated map that shows where these birds are at any given time throughout the year. You can also see a brief description of that species and its habitat. A key takeaway is the ability to see how birds that spend time near you rely on an array of habitats across the hemisphere. Another view of the map lets users see how a single tagged bird connects people and regions across time and space. And yet another lets users explore the various conservation challenges a species faces in different places. These attributes of the Explorer offer many opportunities for further investigation by your class as a whole and/or for projects for small groups or individual students.

Why It Matters

Birds play a significant role in every habitat and ecosystem. They are connected to the plants and other animals that share a place in various ways. Birds need plants for places to rest, hide, and nest. Some depend on plants for food. Some plants depend on them for pollination or seed dispersal. Some birds feed on other wild animals—from insects and worms to fish, snakes, and even other birds. Birds are healthy when the places they pass through or live are healthy. Other livings things, including humans, need those places to be healthy, too. Being able to see which birds are going where, how many of them there are, and whether their patterns are changing, is important information scientists can use to evaluate the environmental health of a given place, a region, a continent, and even planet Earth. That same information is valuable to policy makers at all levels, farmers and other land managers, civic planners, and individuals as they make decisions that support the well-being of those to whom they are accountable or for whom they are responsible or concerned. For detailed help using the Bird Migration Explorer, click the “How to Use the Explorer” button on the Teacher’s Guide page for this topic.