How Do Birds Find Their Way? Book & Activity

The girls and I are on a quest.

We’re on a quest to learn as much about the natural world as we can. I hope you’ll come along on the journey with us.

We’ll consult many books, do science experiments, look at things up close, observe, pretend, do art project, and many, many other things while we’re learning. Let’s have fun!

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We’re still in love with birds and interested in learning as much as we can about them. We recently discovered a book that asked an interesting question:How Do Birds Find Their Way? (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2). We wanted to know.

As always, we went outside to read our book. I’ve learned that we learn a lot more if we can look and observe while we’re reading.

We learned that scientists are still learning about how birds find their way. We also talked about our own theories, and then read the book to see if we were right. We were thrilled to find that some of our theories were indeed correct!

We then decided to become birds ourselves.

We flew around the backyard… zoom, zoom, zoom. We dipped, we soared, we wore ourselves out and had to stop and rest.

After our rest, it was time to test out one of the theories in the book. Birds use the sun when flying north in the summer and south in the winter.

First, we had to learn about how the sun moved during the day; we also learned that this never changes.

A bird can indeed learn that the sun rises in the east and set in the west and use this knowledge to determine direction.

We tested out this theory. We found a round ball for a sun and then we figured out the best way to find direction.

If we were a bird and wanted to fly north in the morning, we would make sure the sun was on our right side. If we were flying north in the afternoon, the sun would be on our left. It sounds complicated, but it’s not. Once you try it out yourself, it’s easy to see how a bird can use sun in this way.

If you have a question about nature, get outside and test it out! It’s a fun way to learn.