There are all kinds of different birds on our planet, and they migrate to different places.
My friend Heather Watts, a researcher at Washington State University, is really curious about bird migration and told me more about how birds know where to go.
Scientists think that some birds may know where to go because of a kind of program that’s built into a bird’s DNA. It’s sort of like being born with a set of directions they know how to use. This genetic information is passed down from bird grandparents to bird parents to the offspring.
“What we think a lot of birds do the very first time they migrate is use a program that tells them what direction to go and how far to go in that direction,” Watts said.
Different birds may migrate in different ways, but they will often migrate for similar reasons. While there are some unsolved mysteries around migration, one thing we do know is that migration is really important for helping birds find what they need to reproduce and survive.