Fun fact. Until 1822, we had absolutely no idea what happened to birds in the winter. All we knew were there were birds in the summer and no birds in the winter. And people developed a lot of crazy theories about what would happen to the birds every fall. Some people said they would dive into lakes and hibernate under the ice. Some people thought they would burrow into the ground to hibernate while other people said the birds would transition themselves into other animals, like mice and rabbits in the winter, and then would transition themselves back into birds in the spring.

A Harvard educator name Charles Morton did propose migration in 1694, but he believed birds migrated to the moon and back. Then in 1822 a German Hunter was out looking for dinner near the town of Klutz when he shot and killed a white stork. But when he picked up the bird he found it already had a 30-inch spear in its neck. Finding this interesting, the hunter brought his kill to the nearby University of Rostock, where scientists found the iron-tipped wood spear to be of Central African origin. This proved without a doubt the stork had migrated between Europe and Africa and led scientists down the right path to discover that birds migrate to warmer climates in the winter.