Birds Use an Invisible 'Map' to Find Their Way in Faraway Places They've Never Seen RICHARD HOLLAND & DMITRY KISHKINEV, THE CONVERSATION 15 FEBRUARY 2021 Every year, billions of songbirds migrate thousands of miles between Europe and Africa – and then repeat that same journey again, year after year, to nest in exactly the same place that they chose on their first great journey.
The remarkable navigational precision displayed by these tiny birds – as they travel alone over stormy seas, across vast deserts, and through extremes in weather and temperature – has been one of the enduring mysteries of behavioural biology. We know that birds buffeted by winds so much that they're significantly displaced from their migratory route are able to realign their course if they've already performed one migration. This has suggested that birds' navigational abilities – some of which is built around a sense of compass direction – includes a mechanism for finding their way back home from parts of the world they've never before visited.