In 1822, near the present German city of Klutz, a hunter shot and killed a white stork.. A common practice for those times, if not for one detail: an 80-centimeter spear was sticking out of the bird’s neck, which was used to hit it even earlier. This terrible discovery has revolutionized European science's understanding of where birds disappear in winter.. Before this, scientists quite seriously believed that swallows sleep at the bottom of lakes, and storks fly to the moon.
When scientists believed in space birds.
17th century, Europe, Age of Enlightenment. Isaac Newton had already discovered the laws of gravity, Galileo proved that the Earth revolves around the Sun. But the best minds on the continent still had no idea where millions of birds disappear every autumn.
Back in the 4th century AD, Aristotle proposed two theories. First: birds hibernate. Swallows, he believes, wrap themselves in clay balls and sink to the bottom of the swamps.. The second theory is even more exotic: birds simply turn into other species. Redstarts become alders, garden wrens (summer birds in Greece) become blackcaps (partially winter). The logic is simple: some birds disappear precisely when others appear.
These ideas dominated science for almost two thousand years. Carl Linnaeus, the father of biological taxonomy, believed that swallows hibernate underwater. Even Georges Cuvier, the founder of paleontology, did not deny the hypothesis of hibernation.
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The English scientist Charles Morton in 1684 rejected the idea of \u200b\u200bunderwater hibernation as absurd - after all, birds cannot breathe underwater. But he offered the only, in his opinion, logical explanation: they winter on the Moon. Morton calculated everything: the journey takes 60 days, the birds fly at a speed of about 200 kilometers per hour, feed on accumulated fat and mostly sleep along the way.. The lack of atmospheric resistance makes flight easier, and the lack of gravity helps cover distances. According to the then ideas about space - a completely scientific hypothesis.
“Where else could these creatures fly if not to the Moon " And indeed, no one in Europe knew where the birds were disappearing to.. They just disappeared into the sky.
Pfeilstorch: when the arrow became proof.
On May 21, 1822, near the village of Klutz on the Baltic coast of Germany, a local hunter shot and killed a white stork.. When I approached the prey, I saw the incredible: the bird’s neck was pierced by a long wooden spear with an iron tip..
The stork was taken to the University of Rostotsk, where botanist Heinrich Gustav Flerke conducted a detailed study. The spear had a wide iron tip, attached with sinews to a shaft made of fine-veined tropical wood.. Flerke came to the conclusion: the bird was pierced in the upper Nile region, in the territory of modern Sudan, where such spears were used for hunting. This meant that the stork flew more than 3,000 kilometers with an African weapon in its neck..
The Germans dubbed the find Pfeilstorch - “stork with an arrow”. The bird was dissected along with the spear, and today it is exhibited in the zoological collection of Rostotsky University. But this was not the only such case. Over the next decades, 24 more similar finds were documented..
The spear passed through the soft tissue of the neck, bypassing the spine, major blood vessels and airways. The stork's long flexible neck has plenty of room between vital structures. In addition, the unique respiratory system of birds with air sacs connected to hollow bones allows them to survive even with partial damage to the trachea. Ornithologist Ernst Schutz later cataloged these cases. They even found swans and eiders with Inuit arrows - evidence of migration to the Arctic.
Vyriy: Ukrainian paradise for birds and souls.
While European scientists were arguing about the Moon and underwater hibernation, Ukrainians already had their own answer to the question about the wintering place of birds. This place was called Vyriy.
In Slavic mythology, Vyriy (also Iriy, Urai) is a warm, fertile country far in the east or south, across the sea. Eternal summer reigns there, the World Tree grows, in the crown of which birds and the souls of the dead live. This is a place where there is no suffering and worries - a Slavic paradise that existed long before the adoption of Christianity.
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As Ukrainian scientist-philosopher Elena Predko notes, the etymology of the word “viriy” is associated with related concepts: paradise (eternal warmth, bliss), swarm (riyati, swarm), horizon. Some researchers see a connection with mobility - “rinuti”, the flow of air masses. The ancient Ukrainian word “ir” meant sunrise and a warm place.
The idea of \u200b\u200bVyry was hierarchical: in the upper part of the World Tree there is a bird paradise, where birds and the souls of the righteous live. Under the roots there is a “viper pit” where snakes crawl for the winter. The gate was guarded by the god Veles, who held the keys to other worlds.
In the folk songs of the spring cycle, the motif of opening Vyriy with a key has been preserved. According to legend, the keys once belonged to a crow, but it angered God, and they were given to the cuckoo - the bird that is the first to fly to Vyriy and the last to return. “The crow flies across the sea, but the evil one twirls,” people said.
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Birds returning from Vyri, according to legend, brought with them warmth and new life. And in Ukrainian folklore, an echo of ancient ideas about reincarnation has been preserved: the flight of birds to Vyriy was associated with the movement of souls to the other world, where the souls of unborn children await their time. Hence the popular formula: “Where do children come from "
Vladimir Monomakh in his “Instructions” wrote about migratory birds that in the spring “come from Irya” at God’s command. That is, the concept of migration - albeit in mythological form - existed among the Slavs hundreds of years before Pfeilstorch.
“The swallow has flown in”: why does the spring bird sing on Generous Evening.
“Shchedrik, generous, generous, the swallow has flown in. “The whole world knows these words - Nikolai Leontovich’s melody has become one of the most popular Christmas songs on the planet, known as Carol of the Bells. But why does the swallow fly in winter, among the snow and frost
The answer is hidden in the depths of millennia. The text of “Shchedryk” is not a Christmas song in the modern sense. This is an ancient ritual generosity, which was performed on the New Year holiday.. And our ancestors celebrated the New Year in the spring - just when birds returned from Vyri, harbingers of warmth and revival.
The swallow in the Slavic tradition is a sacred bird that brings happiness to the house. It symbolizes a new beginning, fertility, prosperity. In the text of the schedrivka, a bird flies to its owner with good news: “There the sheep lay there, and the lambs were born” - spring, new life, prosperity.
According to musicologist Anatoly Ivanitsky, musical forms of such a structure as in “Shchedryk” - four notes that are repeated - could have existed 12 thousand years ago, during the Mesolithic era. Not “Shchedryk” himself, of course, but the type of tune from which it grew. This makes Shchedrivka one of the oldest examples of Ukrainian folklore.
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By the way, the song may not only be about a swallow. Shchedrik is also a real bird, the canary finch (Serinus serinus) - its melody is fast, the bird is chattering about something, as if it is generous. No other bird in Ukraine has such a fast song.. Shchedrik flies to us at the end of March - beginning of April, at the same time as the swallow. Although the bird received its name later - probably due to the similarity of fast singing and generosity.
Ukrainian storks: ten thousand kilometers from home.
Today we know exactly where the birds fly. GPS trackers, satellite tracking, ringing - these technologies allow you to track every kilometer of migration. Migration distance is about ten thousand kilometers to wintering areas in Eastern and Southern Africa, about five thousand kilometers to Sudan (where a large number of white storks stop). In Ukraine there is a kind of flying border that runs along the Left Bank of the Dnieper. Storks from the western, central and northern regions fly along the western coast of the Black Sea, cross the Bosphorus and head towards East Africa. Birds from the eastern regions migrate along the southeastern route through the Caucasus.
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Ornithologist Vitaly Grishchenko notes that about 45-50 thousand pairs of white storks nest in Ukraine - according to the results of the VIII International Census in 2024, this is one of the largest populations in Europe. Most of them are in the northwestern regions, further to the south and east the number gradually decreases. Storks do not nest in the southeast and most of Crimea. After a decline during the war years, the population began to recover.
During spring migration, storks travel up to 550 kilometers per day in Africa and more than 350 kilometers per day in Europe. They fly during the day, at an average altitude of 1.5 km, using thermal air currents. This is why they avoid flying over the sea - there are no updrafts there.
From the arrow to the satellite: two hundred years of discoveries.
The Pfeilstorch of Klutz was a turning point in the history of ornithology, but not an instant epiphany. Even after 1822, some scientists continued to believe in underwater hibernation. Only mass bird ringing at the end of the 19th century finally confirmed the migration theory.
Today we know that the arctic mallard covers more than 70 thousand kilometers a year, migrating from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back. That birds navigate by the Earth's magnetic field. That in the song of the bush moth you can hear the sounds of 45 African bird species - an echo of wintering places.
Modern science knows much more than two hundred years ago. We found that changing day length triggers hormonal changes that encourage birds to migrate.
Scientists from Oxford and Oldenburg have proven that birds can literally see the Earth's magnetic field, thanks to quantum processes in the cryptochrome protein in their eyes - it's like built-in augmented reality. But some mysteries remain: how exactly the brain processes these signals, how birds form mental maps of routes, why young storks that have never seen Africa find their way there? Migration is still one of the most amazing natural phenomena.
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