Flyover country? Birds, bats and butterflies migrate through our area

For eons, that’s exactly what animals have done through migration. When you’re looking for motives in human behavior, they say, follow the money. If you’re looking for wildlife, follow the food.

Migration was always a perilous time for land mammals. River crossings and predators, then humans (well before cars and interstate highways), made journeys treacherous. To date, there aren’t any major migrations of mammals in or through Southwest Ohio.

There haven’t been any wild bison or elk for more than a century. But lifeforms that can move above the ground — birds, bats, and butterflies to name a few — are still completing their ancient migrations.

Flocking around

There’s a reason they call temporary winter residents in Florida “snow birds.” Birds are the most famous of migrators and often immediately impact their environment when they arrive.

Some gather in bigger groups after leaving the nest, which can also seem like a migration has arrived.

Here in Southwest Ohio, lately our winters aren’t so bad for many species after all. Black-eyed Juncos migrate from Canada to winter in Ohio. They’re seed eaters and just need to escape months of deep snow and cold. Lately, likewise, Ohio winters haven’t chased off Starlings (unfortunately) and Robins.

However, they gather in large groups (called Murmurations and Rounds respectively) that can make it seem like thousands have arrived from somewhere else.

Seeing “the first robin of spring” isn’t a sign that spring has arrived in our part of Ohio.

But other birds, such as those that feed exclusively on insects or rely on fruit, pollen or need reliable open water (i.e. not frozen) will have to follow their taste buds to somewhere else during the winter. That means warblers, swallows, martins, orioles, hummingbirds and any number of shorebirds will all have to leave.

That happens at different times in the fall, but as I write this, the Birdcast website estimates that more than 300,000 birds have crossed Greene County tonight as part of their migration.

How do they know?

There are a lot of questions still about how birds navigate, and it’s not completely understood. But scientists suspect it involves multiple systems, including light waves (they see at least six different wavelengths, audio, smell, topography and possibly magnet fields via quantum physics and radical pairs of atoms, which I won’t even try to explain (I’ll link to a podcast that does try).

I will say, through it all, many species seem to orient themselves at sunset, seeing whatever it is they see through all those different spectrums, before they start their journey, because I like that idea.

Mammals skipping the trail

As mentioned in a previous column, some Ohio bats, including the Hoary, Eastern Red, Evening and Silver-haired bat, migrate. While they’re here, they roost in trees.

When the bugs are gone, they bug out as far as Central America.

Two incredible journeys

While most insects manage to overwinter in a pupae or larval stage, Monarch butterflies seen in Ohio in the fall migrate more than 2,000 miles to the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. These southbound individuals can live as long as 9 months as they complete their travel.

They lay their eggs at the end to restart the cycle. What’s fascinating is that their northbound offspring don’t live as long, just 2-5 weeks. They’ll mate, lay eggs on milkweed, and their offspring will continue the journey north that year. It can take 3-4 generations for the northbound descendants to reach their destinations in Ohio and points even more north.

Then another southbound generation makes the trek back.

Migration Vs Roaming and Expanding

Different species roam in and out of Ohio, but they’re not migrating. The black bear that passed through the area recently wasn’t migrating, just looking for a new home. Similarly, deer, coyotes and bobcats can move great distances as individuals sometimes, but they’re not migrating.

And it’s just a matter of time it seems, before the nine-banded armadillo becomes a regular full-time resident in Southwest Ohio. Once common only in Texas and the South, they have expanded dramatically north and east in recent years.

They are in Indiana and headed this way.

MORE ONLINE

Read more of Devin Meister’s columns at daytondailynews.com, springfieldnewssun.com and journal-news.com. Search “Average Guy Outdoors.”