Bird Migration

Write a short report about a migrating bird.

Use the book, On the Wing: American Birds in Migration by Carol Lerner and compare its maps and diagrams to the text to clarify details of the book.

Discuss together in class how migrating birds might know when to migrate, where to go, how to get there, and survival skills they'll need along the way.

Be a birdwatcher. Go outside and count the number of birds you see flying overhead during a set period of time.

Using a ruler and a map of a migration route, measure the round trip distance of a bird species. After determining your map's scale, calculate the distance of the full trip.

Create a table comparing bird wingspans and distances flown during migration. Determine if there is a relationship.

All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Different foods are needed by different animals.

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need.

Animals have body parts that capture and convey different kinds of information needed for growth and survival. Animals respond to these inputs with behaviors that help them survive. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to see, hear, protect themselves, move from place to place, and seek and take in food.

Adult animals can have young. In many kinds of animals, parents and the offspring themselves engage in behaviors that help the offspring to survive.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water. Emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

Being part of a group helps animals obtain food and cope with changes.

Interactions with the environment affect the characteristics that organisms develop.

Examples of evidence could include needs and characteristics of the animals and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there. When the environment changes in ways that affect a place's physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of food and water, some animals survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die.

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources. Emphasis is on cause and effect relationships between resources and growth of individual organisms and the numbers of organisms in ecosystems during periods of abundant and scarce resources.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in its populations.