Wood duck, Quebec, Canada

© Maxime Riendeau/Getty Image

Winging it across continents. World Migratory Bird Day

Celebrate our travelling feathered friends on World Migratory Bird Day! Some migrations are truly astounding. The bar-tailed godwit embarks on a 6,835-mile nonstop flight across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand. The tiny ruby-throated hummingbird, weighing less than a penny, and makes the trip all the way across the Gulf of Mexico—a seemingly impossible feat for its size. Migratory birds navigate the globe, instinctively knowing when and where to move to exploit seasonal abundance. The Arctic tern outshines them all with its intercontinental journey from pole to pole, covering more than 18,000 miles. Their migration routes are passages created based on environmental cues.

Let's take a moment to admire the vibrant plumage of the wood duck, photographed in Quebec, Canada and featured here today. Wood ducks, like the one in today's image, nest in tree cavities close to water and sometime take advantage of man-made boxes. During the breeding season, from February to April, you'll find the females laying 7-15 eggs. After breeding in the eastern and western United States and southern Canada, these ducks migrate southward in autumn to avoid harsh winter conditions. By October and November, they move towards milder climates in the southeastern United States and occasionally into Mexico.