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Flight Paths review: Why understanding migration may save bird species

Solving the mysteries of bird migration with technology not only unlocks unexpected secrets but is crucial to conservation efforts, says Rebecca Heisman in her fascinating first book

By Corryn Wetzel

8 March 2023

New Scientist Default Image

Technology has revealed the truth about the migration of birds like snow geese.

Steve Byland/istockphoto/getty images

Flight Paths
Rebecca Heisman (published by Harper Collins in the US on 14 March, and by Swift Press in the UK on 20 April)

QUESTIONS about how and why so many birds make extraordinarily arduous annual migrations – and where they are going – have puzzled us for years. Perhaps they are flying to the moon, speculated 17th-century English educator Charles Morton; others had wondered if, when birds vanished, they might be hunkering down for the winter at the bottom …

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