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		Nature Conservancy Magazine: Spring 2004 Nature Conservancy Magazine   Spring 2004 issue Tropical Rainforest Nature Stories Podcast Nature Books Nature Travel Nature Landmarks Natural Events Nature Preserves Subscribe to our magazine!

Across the Gulf on a Wing and a Prayer

By Scott Weidensaul

For Millions of America's Migrant Songbirds, Crossing 600 Miles of Open Water Is One Miracle. Landing Safely Is Another.

© Illustration by Kirk Caldwell Click here for a larger map.

It was a chilly April day on the Alabama beach, where the last wet remnant of a big storm was churning its way south into the Gulf of Mexico.

The north wind was whipping the tops of the pines and live oaks of Fort Morgan, a long peninsula of dune and forest that pokes into Mobile Bay from the east. For hours there had been little in the way of birds, except for pelicans fishing in the rough surf, and a few cardinals hunkered down in the hollows.

But as the late-day sun finally broke through the clouds, the silent woods suddenly came alive. Flocks of black-and-white birds dropped wearily into the treetops—dozens of eastern kingbirds, their tails tipped with white. What had been a lifeless patch of woods was now brimming with flashing wings and buzzy calls. More and more kingbirds arrived, some hawking cold-numbed insects from the air; with them came orchard and Baltimore orioles, and a few scarlet tanagers the color of blood.

the incredible journey

Follow the path of songbirds from Central America to the Gulf Coast of the United States in Scott Weidensaul's "The Incredible Journey".

They were just the leading edge of a great wave crossing the gulf on a broad front stretching from east Texas to the Florida panhandle—millions of songbirds that had left Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula the evening before, battling their way through the cold head wind for much of the previous 24 hours.

As the sun dropped over Mobile Bay, more and more birds poured into the woods—white-eyed vireos, prothonotary warblers, indigo buntings, even ruby-throated hummingbirds that had made the 600-mile nonstop crossing. Many of the slower fliers would not make landfall until well into the next day, exhausted after a journey of nearly 40 hours.

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