Zoom in: That single bird spreads its wings, joining thousands upon thousands of birds spread across the night sky. The birds will flow through the sky, a living river rolling through darkness, skirting storms and artificial light and a minefield of inhospitable landscapes below. Or a Bobolink, a Scarlet Tanager, a Wilson’s Warbler .Tonight, conditions seem right. Or a Yellow-billed Cuckoo leaving the Bolivian plains, bound for the deciduous woodlands of Illinois, some 4,000 miles away. Or a Blackpoll Warbler in an orange grove in Colombia, set to make a 6,000-mile journey to Canada’s boreal forest. Maybe an Upland Sandpiper standing on the vast Argentine pampas, ready to launch itself on an 8,000-mile trek to its breeding grounds on Alaska’s upland tundra.
Imagine a single bird during a spring dusk moments before flight.
