The Wonders of God’s Creation
This verse speaks very plainly of God’s care over the birds and His appointment of the time of their migrations. In the preceding issue mention was made of the work done by bird lovers and researchers looking into the migrations of birds throughout the world. Now, let’s get a globe of the world and look at the facts about just a tiny number of the many millions of birds involved.
The greatest traveler of all is the Arctic tern that flies from the Aleutian Islands to Antarctica every fall and returns again in the spring — some 12,000 miles each way! A shorter journey is the 25-hour, 500-mile, non-stop trip of the 8-ounce ruby-throated hummingbird, flying from the United States over the Gulf of Mexico to Central America. How do you think this tiny bird can do this?
From various parts of Europe, storks make round-trip flights of 14,000 miles to Israel, the Nile River and South Africa, the young ones going a week or two ahead of the parents, although they have never migrated before. How do they know where to go?
Swallows arrive in Southern California every March after a 6000-mile flight from Argentina, going to the same nest previously used, while orioles wintering in South America return in May to their summer homes in the eastern United States after a 2000-mile flight.
The Tennessee warbler, weighing about as much as two quarters, flies some 3000 miles from Canada and the northern United States to Central and South America each fall. Some fly nonstop. Others take short rests en route. Their close relatives, blackpoll warblers, raising their families in northern Canada and Alaska, get together with others of their kind in New England during September, then the whole group continues another 2100 miles on a 100-hour nonstop ocean flight to South America. By contrast, bobolinks in the fall fly almost entirely overland from Canadian prairies to the pampas of Argentina — a 6000-mile trip returning in the spring.
Golden plovers from Alaska fly over the Pacific to Hawaii — a 2000-mile trip —and after resting go on another 2000 miles south. Parent birds take off first, leaving the young ones to follow later. Never having done this before, can you explain in what way their little ones know how to reach the Hawaiian Islands? One thing we do know is that these flights, and untold numbers of others, speak of the Creator’s care over all His creation, from the smallest to the greatest. “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.” Acts 15:1818Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. (Acts 15:18).
(to be continued)
ML-10/04/1987