Fall Bird Migrations: Where do all the birds go?

From grade school we are taught that birds fly south for the winter to where it is warmer and north for the summer to where it is cooler.  Of course this is true but is obviously over simplified.  Birds don't just go south or north, they actually go to specific locations.  Scientists and bird watchers have tracked the migratory movement of birds in an effort to answer the question: where do birds actually go?  By tagging birds at their breeding grounds and then tracking the tagged birds as they migrate scientists were able to answer the question.  Watch the following video to see where birds go after they migrate south from Alaska for the winter.  It is amazing how Alaska has such a huge concentration of breeding birds in the summer that populate so much of the world as they migrate south.  This leaves us with very good reason to protect Alaska bird breeding grounds in order to protect many bird populations throughout the world.  It is also interesting that not all birds actually migrated south in the study, some actually migrated north from Alaska.  I suppose they migrated north across the North Pole so they could migrate south on the other side of the world. 

The colored dots in the video represent locations where birds originating in Alaska were found as the migrated.