Help Us Migrate To Our Holiday Season Fundraising Goal!

Help us to care for birds that would normally have migrated this Fall, but can’t for various reasons. With your donations, we can care for these animals so that they can be released again in the Spring to re-join their flocks.

Donation Map

FUNDRAISING GOAL UPDATE:

We have now achieved our migration fund raising goal of $10,000.00, so therefore The Broad-winged Hawk has completed its journey to Bolivia! We would like thank everyone very much that has contributed towards our event and look forward to your continued support in 2010.

4th Annual Spring Baby Shower and Fundraiser

Our 4th annual Spring Baby Shower and Fundraiser will be held on Sunday May 16th from 12:00 till 3:00 at the Southdale Community Centre, 254 Lakewood Boulevard, Winnipeg. Please watch for further details shortly.

Did You Know?

The primary physiological cue for migration are the changes in the day length.
520 of the 650 bird species (80%) that nest in North America are migratory.
Most birds fly at an altitude of 500 to 2000 ft. However, Bar-headed geese have been recorded as high as 29,000 feet when they migrate over the Himalayas! That's five miles above our heads - even higher than Mount Everest!
The title for longest distance traveled is held by the Arctic Tern, which makes its journey from the Antarctic to the Arctic annually, a trip of 11,000 miles each way.
Long distance migrants are believed to disperse as young birds, and form attachments to potential breeding sites and to favourite wintering sites. Once the site attachment is made, they visit the same wintering sites year after year.
Most migrants travel with a series of short flights and frequent stopovers, usually flying from 2 to 8 hours during a stretch. Other birds take longer trips, such as the Red Knot, which may fly nonstop for 60 hours. Most birds don’t travel every day. Some only take days to travel hundreds of miles, while some may spend weeks on the same distance. Mallards have been clocked traveling over 300 miles a day, whereas the Lincoln’s Sparrow averages about 50 miles a day.
Speed normally ranges from 20 to 50 miles per hour, but some sandpipers can fly more than 100 miles per hour!
Some birds store a special, high-energy fat before the trip, often nearly doubling their body weight before departing. Some, like soaring raptors, may not eat for several weeks as they migrate, relying instead on stored body fat. Other species perform voracious "stop-'n-gobble" ceremonies along their migrations.
Since at least 1968, ornithologists have thought that genetics plays a role in migration. For instance, if you cage a migratory leaf warbler, it will hop restlessly during migration season.
In the past, there have been many theories to explain the phenomenon of migration. One theory was that birds went to the moon every winter. Another was that small birds were carried across the ocean on the backs of larger birds. It was also thought at one point that birds hibernated during the winter. Aristotle held the theory of transmutation, which suggested that birds changed into other species as the seasons changed.