<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

More from Books

Bird migration is no longer a mystery — but it will always seem a miracle

13 March 2021

9:00 AM

13 March 2021

9:00 AM

A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds Scott Weidensaul

Picador, pp.400, 20

Bird migration was once one of those unassailable mysteries that had baffled humankind since Aristotle. A strange hypothesis, genuinely advanced in the early modern period, was that birds flew to the Moon for winter, and barely more credible was a notion, which haunted the patron saint of British naturalists Gilbert White, that swallows buried themselves in mud.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Easter flash sale:
10 issues for $1

Subscribe this Easter and get the next 10 issues of the magazine, plus website and app access, all for just $1.

  • Weekly delivery of the magazine
  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • Spectator Australia podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock 3 articles a month

REGISTER

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

Easter flash sale: 10 issues for $1

Join the conversation with other Spectator Australia readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close