Migration:
Still a Magical Mystery Tour
Story and photographs by Sue Corcoran
If only those shorebirds on our beach could talk, this is what they might tell us
about migration:
• • If you ran four-minute miles continuously for 60 hours, you would use roughly
the same amount of energy as shorebirds who fly non-stop for three or four days
during their annual migration. One way. And they make the trip twice a year,
every year.*
• • Shorebirds in general migrate long distances. Seventy-five percent of the
shorebird species that breed in North America spend their winter months south
of the U.S. border.
• • Migrating shorebirds are high flyers, cruising at up to 13,000 feet. Most migrating
songbirds don’t venture above 2,000 feet, while waterfowl and raptors normally
don’t exceed 4,000 feet.
• • South Carolina is an important stopover place on the migration routes of
thousands of shorebirds as well as a winter home for others who do not migrate
as far south. A few shorebirds are year round residents.
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