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The Greatest Show on Earth |
| Section: NATURAL SCIENCE / NATURE WALK |
| Author: Dwight G. Smith |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 10/1/1994 |
| Size: 2,261 Words, 13,873 Characters |
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Sometime in autumn, swallows and sparrows will gather in long rows on country telephone lines. As the daylight wanes, they will become increasingly restive, as if awaiting the start of a momentous event. Tentatively at first, in ones and twos, then in family groups and flocks, they will begin a difficult and dangerous period in their lives as they migrate southward to their wintering grounds, where food and good weather prevail. In spring, they will repeat the process in reverse, migrating north, where longer days and the plentiful food of spring and summer provide optimal breeding grounds. Birds are joined in these spring and fall migrations by millions of mammals, fish, amphibians, and even insects. Together, these seasonal movements of enormous numbers of animals constitute the greatest...
. . .
... their present state of perfection by countless individual experiments performed over millions of years. Less-efficient navigators got lost, or failed to store enough energy, or strayed over mountains or seas or deserts and died. Their migratory genes were eliminated from the population. The hazards of migration still operate today, tuning and toning the navigators and weeding out the inept.
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