For the last month we have been noticing a lot of the migrating bird species that are back for the summer, some for breeding and others for a nice summer holiday.

Some birds migrate all the way from Russia and others just fly to the equator.  We will never truly understand why they go to such great extremes, but some reasons why a bird would migrate are:

Breeding grounds

Food availability

Climate change

These are just three of the reasons that influence birds, but one big question remains and that’s how do they know when is the right time to migrate? Recently in SA, an early journey resulted in the death of  many swallows due to a very bad cold spell and then the question on every ones minds was "what is going to happen to the population? Once again global warming was believed to be the cause.

That just shows that we don’t always realize what the influence of our pollution is on the world.

Armand Steyn

Ranger

Kapama Main Lodge