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National Geographic Channel's groundbreaking series Great Migrations explores the massive movement of animal populations around the planet. The project chronicles these inspirational, often harrowing journeys that are marked by unforgiving odds, and what it means to move like your life depends on it. Wildebeests, zebras, red crabs, Mali elephants, walruses, monarch butterflies, jellyfish, and whale sharks will all be on display, and the production crew traveled some 420,000 miles, filming hundreds of stories in more than 20 countries. Using new science and technology, the series reveals how animals make death-defying journeys to survive. Great Migrations is the largest undertaking of its kind in the National Geographic Society's 120-year history. The seven-hour miniseries premieres globally in fall 2010. National Geographic's net proceeds support vital exploration, conservation, research, and education.

"In this lesson students examine the patterns of gray whale migration along the Pacific Coast of North America. The exercise provides data at both broad and local scales, providing students with migration patterns and local scale feeding patterns. "

"Birds instinct to migrate is often influenced by sudden shifts in temperature, amount of available daylight, moon phases and when strong tail winds are present. Like air quality, pollen count and UV reports, the FLAP Tracker is a Bird Migration Intensity report that alerts you to the concentration of birds as they fly through your region. "

Follow an osprey's migration online: "As part of a two-year research project, we have outfitted a male Osprey nesting at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge with a GPS pack in order to follow him on his local hunting trips during the summer and his yearly migrations south."

"For thousands of years and countless generations, migratory birds have flown the same long-distance paths between their breeding and feeding grounds. Understanding the routes these birds take, called flyways, helps conservation efforts and gives scientists better knowledge of global changes, both natural and man-made. QUEST heads out to the Pacific Flyway with California biologists to track the rhythm of migration."

60 Minutes on CBS News: The Great Migration - Scott Pelley visits Kenya, the site of the great wildebeest migration, and looks at the threats to this natural spectacle comprised of over a million animals.

"The arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea) makes an incredible migration each year. These small birds travel distances of more than 50000 miles, from pole to pole, crossing through temperate and tropical regions along the way. Carsten Egevang used geo-locator tags to track ten of these terns, and he shares their story with us in this tour."

Google Earth tour and video showing scientists tracking migration routes of Arctic Terns between Greenland and the Antarctic

Migrating bird species range farther north in reaction to climate change

migration maps

How do you effectively prioritize conservation decisions for migratory species? Is it better to target species when breeding, wintering, migrating or some mix? How do you build forecast changes in climate and land use when making these decisions?

NY Times article about modeling bird migration using eBird citizen science data along with habitat variables

"Some species, such as warblers, which can weigh less than an ounce but fly 2,500 miles without resting, double their body weights in preparation for the voyage.To put it in a human perspective, if you were going to put on a lot of fat and try to live off it while doing a cross-country run, you would die," said Russell Greenberg, head of the National Zoo's Migratory Bird Center. "There's no human equivalent.""

Includes some great species-specific migration and tracker maps, + Esri's wind map and others related to wildlife and natural resources

"Ocean Tracks provides access to authentic data collected by migrating marine animals, drifting buoys, and satellites, along with tools that allow you to display and analyze these data to investigate current and important scientific questions about animal interactions with the ocean environment. "

"On the evening of the ninth anniversary of 9/11, the twin columns of light projected as a memorial over the World Trade Center site became a source of mystery. Illuminated in the beams were thousands of small white objects, sparkling and spiraling, unlike anything seen on other nights... Those unidentified objects have now been identified as birds, pulled from their migratory path and bedazzled by the light in a perfect, poignant storm of avian disorientation."

satellite tracking of migratory birds