MigrationLesson A: A Tern Around the World
Grades: 3-6
Subject Areas: Science, Geography
Skills: small motor skills, map-reading
Standards met: tbd
Time: Prep: 45-60 minutes
Location: classroom
Materials: 25 foot long rope, world maps (1 map/2-3 students) , card stock (2 sheets/student), white paper (1/2 sheet/student), stapler, scissors, stamp pads and stamps, pencils, red and black markers, signs for different countries.
Goals: To learn the migration route of the world’s longest migrant – the Arctic Tern - and consider its implications.
Objectives: 1. Learn the various ways bird migration has been studied 2. Review actual Maine Arctic Tern migration data.
3. Track the various different countries (with different political systems, laws and climates) that the terns experience every year.
Summary: After learning the basics of tracking bird migration, students will find the migration route of an Arctic Tern on a world map using real banding and geolocator data. Each person will create a flying tern of paper, and then migrate it around the room, which has been set up as a large scale map of the world. At each different country it encounters the tern can be stamped like a passport.
Vocabulary: passport, migration, bird banding, geo-locator.
The Lesson:
Introduction: Studying the migration of birds is a tricky proposition. Since J.J. Audubon tied a string around a sparrow’s leg, people have marked birds with bands to identify them as individuals. The Arctic Tern is known as “the master migrant of the bird world”, migrating from Maine and further north all the way to Antarctica and back every year! Thousands of terns have been banded in Maine, but only a small number have been re-sighted in other places. It is tricky because one must read the tiny 8-digit number on a live or dead bird and then report it to the Bird Banding Laboratory in Maryland, USA. This was how the puzzle of their migration was figured out.
More modern technology uses satellite tags and geo-locators to track movement. Satellite tags are expensive and currently too big for the tiny terns, but have given us fascinating information about larger birds like albatrosses. Geo-locators are tiny devices which can be put on a band and record the sunrise and sunset time each day. If the bird is recaptured, that information can be analyzed and made into a map. Scientists at the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge (USFWS) have recently gotten some exciting data this way.
Migrating some 40,000 miles per year, the Arctic Tern sees more sunlight than any other animal. Imagine how many places these terns see each year, how many different climates, fish species, political systems and environmental laws they encounter! We work hard to protect these birds in Maine, but they go many places where they aren’t so well protected. We think of them as “our birds” but they are truly citizens of the world!
Activity:
1. Hand out world maps to every 2-3 students. Have students locate Maine on the map. Call out the other locations where terns from Maine and nearby Canada have been sighted. Next turn the classroom into a large scale map of the Atlantic Ocean. Lay out the rope as equator across the center of the room. Tape the North Pole sign up at the front of the room. Antarctica will go on the opposite wall, then walk students through placement of the other locations, beginning with Maine. Above the equator or below? Is it on the same side of the ocean as Maine or across the ocean?
2. Make a flying tern. The terns may be photocopied onto card stock or traced by students from patterns made ahead of time. Each student will need to fit one body and one wing on each of their 2 sheets of card stock. The tail will be cut from the regular weight paper and folded like a fan. Place the wings between the body pieces, wingtips pointing back towards tail, and staple three times. Tail fan is placed between tail tips and stapled once. Color the bill red and add a black cap?
3. While students are making terns, teacher will place an inkpad at each country noted around the room, with a rubber stamp to represent that place.
Wrap Up: Time to migrate the flock! Explain that terns like to move as a flock, not individuals. In mid-August the birds at nesting colonies in Maine begin to fly off the island in big silent flocks – this is called dreading. It is thought that dread flights help synchronize the group in preparation for migration. For a time they land again in a big noisy chatter, but one day they rise and fly off together. The terns will begin their migration in Maine where they will stamp their passports. Across the ocean to France (based on band resighting) where they will receive another stamp, and so forth.
Assessment: Give students a map and have them draw the Arctic Tern’s migration route.
Diving Deeper: Choose a foreign country that terns visit on their route and find out what it is like. Research the current environmental laws and conditions there. Understand that politics and poverty have a big impact on wildlife and habitat.
Links:
1. http://www.arctictern.info
2. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/arctic_tern/lifehistory
3. BBC Nature - Arctic tern videos, news and facts
4. Dread flight video – need to find - Sue - perhaps this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJjeHLcbQJ0
Links: 1. Printer-friendly Lesson Summary 2. Flying Tern body and wing pattern 3. Flying Tern tail pattern 4. World Map blank 5. Arctic Tern Banding recoveries list and mp 6. USFWS/MCINWR Arctic Tern geolocator-based migration map
7. Location Signs for migration route
