Migration

Robert Schroeder swooshed his net through the air and captured a monarch butterfly. He took his catch to Brian Campbell, a naturalist at Bear Branch Nature Center, who showed the youngster how to open the butterfly's wings and determine its sex. Campbell documented information about the butterfly, placed a small sticker on one of its wings, and then sat it on Schroeder's nose. "That feels strange," Schroeder said, as the butterfly slowly opened and closed its wings across his nose. After what seemed an eternity to the youngster, the butterfly continued its flight.

MIAMI -- The fate of a generation of endangered migratory whooping cranes now rides on the fragile wings of a 10-month-old chick known as No. 15. He is the sole survivor of the Class of 2006, 18 crane hatchlings that followed four costumed ultra-light aircraft from Wisconsin to Florida wintering grounds in December as part of a project to introduce a second migrating population to North America. Conservationists with Operation Migration had originally feared all of the brood had perished in the storm that killed 20 people in central Florida on Friday and put hundreds of residents from their homes.

At a student history competition filled with traditional topics -- the Underground Railroad, the Irish potato famine -- research on rock 'n' roll may come as a surprise. And that's exactly the reaction its authors want.Hoping to bring a new perspective to the subject of migration, a group of Baltimore County middle school pupils yesterday drew on everyone from Buddy Holly to the Beatles in their National History Day entry at the University of Maryland, College Park.The weeklong event challenges participants to think and work as historians.

ANY OCTOBER morning hereabout is liable to be fine, but is finer still when festooned with monarchs, proceeding on gossamer wings along their grand and mysterious migration.These butterflies have never been to where they unerringly go, to 10,000-foot mountains in Mexico's central highlands some 1,500 miles distant.They are many times removed from progenitors who left those far wintering grounds last spring and moved north toward Texas and the gulf coast, where they died after mating.Successive generations in turn hatched, bred and died, leapfrogging north all summer throughout the United States and Canada.

THE EAGLE has landed," the world heard in July 1969, as humans reached up and touched the moon.On Dec. 19, just as thrilling and profound, three trumpeter swans alighted in a Chesapeake salt marsh, their species' first return in two centuries.But how can you compare them, moonshot and swanfall (a British term for the birds' descent at migration's end)?The Saturn V that boosted Apollo 11 toward the lunar surface stood 363 feet high, weighed 6 million pounds, propelled the astronauts to an escape velocity of seven miles a second, and struck a moving target a quarter-million miles distant with sniper's precision.

The Baga of West Africa are a small, unpowerful people. They number no more than 40,000 in all, and live in several groups of villages along a 100-mile stretch of Guinea's coast. They have never held major political power, and have been subjugated by others, both African and European. Not a people you would think important enough for outsiders to study.Except for their art. Over the centuries, they have created a body of art monumental in its proportions and more highly developed than that of much larger civilizations.

PASSAGE OF the "Smart Growth" legislation to combat suburban sprawl was feted around Annapolis. The governor crowed that it placed Maryland in the rare company of Oregon, noted for its environmental ethic. The House speaker claimed his share of credit for the law, too, saying the legislature honed it into "sensible land management policy." Environmentalists and local officials seemed satisfied, too.Now for the hard part. How to reverse 40 years of outward migration -- from 1950, when Baltimore's residency was double that of all the suburban jurisdictions combined, to today, when the suburbs' population is triple that of the shrinking city.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- As another October faded, there was a new look to the afternoon light. On a couple of mornings there had been a touch of frost, and the nights were filled with the sound of migratory geese. On an autumnal migration of my own, I set out in my old wooden boat for the Eastern Shore.It's a migration which raises eyebrows in Havre de Grace. ''Denton? You're taking your boat to Denton for the winter? That's a hundred miles away!'' Well, it's about 103, actually, and at the rate the Sea Horse chugs, it's a 10-hour trip.

MORELIA, Mexico -- It's butterflies vs. farmers in this mountainous region of central Mexico.Monarch butterflies spend their winters here after migrations of up to 3,000 miles from the United States and Canada. The migration is genetic, not learned: The butterflies that make the migration are the great- or great-great-grandchildren of those that made the same journey the year before. Nobody is sure how they find their way back.The annual arrival of the black-and-gold insects triggers another migration -- of bus loads of tourists who come to see and photograph the butterflies.

MEXICO CITY -- The first formal migration study to be sponsored by the U.S. and Mexican governments has concluded that the number of undocumented Mexican workers who have settled in the United States in this decade is far lower than some politicians have suggested, only about 105,000 a year.Drawn from a two-year analysis of U.S. and Mexican census and other data, the figure is the first authoritative estimate of the net annual flow of illegal Mexican workers into the United States, which has been an elusive statistic at the center of political and academic dispute on both sides of the border.

More people moved out of Howard County to nearby counties and states than moved in over the past few years, a trend that local and state planners think may be the result of sharply rising home prices earlier this decade. The total county population is still growing, though more slowly, according to a draft report by county planner Jeff Bronow. About two-thirds of the growth since 2000 is from births, while just over a quarter is from international migration, and 11.7 percent is from people moving into Howard.

Turning aside calls for a ban on the commercial harvest of horseshoe crabs, Maryland officials are imposing a new limit on the catch in an attempt to help shorebirds that migrate up the Atlantic coast in spring. Effective April 1, fishermen will be required to catch two male horseshoe crabs for every female they keep, the Department of Natural Resources said yesterday. The rule is designed to increase the availability of horseshoe crab eggs on mid-Atlantic beaches when migratory shorebirds arrive in May and June.

In the fall of 2007, a purple martin carrying a miniature locating device on its back made its annual migration from northwest Pennsylvania to the Brazilian rain forest in just 43 days. Then, to the astonishment of songbird scientists, it made the 4,300-mile return trip to its spring breeding grounds in less than two weeks, averaging 311 miles per day - three times faster than previous estimates. That was "really stunning. I don't think anyone had any idea these little songbirds could travel this fast," said biologist Bridget Stutchbury of York University in Toronto.

A misplaced lament for smoke-filled bars Ah yes, the smoke-filled bar ... so sexy, so alluring ("Up in smoke," Jan. 30). Is there anything more appealing than nicotine-brown teeth and fingers? As a teenager, I nearly took up smoking when I watched as Paul Henreid lit two cigarettes simultaneously and coolly passed one off to Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. Today, I am a huge fan of old movies as well as the truth and trivia that surrounds the stars of classic Hollywood. One of the things The Sun's article failed to point out - a fact that makes the iconic image of Humphrey Bogart with cigarette dangling from his lips so very sad - is that he died at the relatively young age of 57 from throat cancer.

Robert Schroeder swooshed his net through the air and captured a monarch butterfly. He took his catch to Brian Campbell, a naturalist at Bear Branch Nature Center, who showed the youngster how to open the butterfly's wings and determine its sex. Campbell documented information about the butterfly, placed a small sticker on one of its wings, and then sat it on Schroeder's nose. "That feels strange," Schroeder said, as the butterfly slowly opened and closed its wings across his nose. After what seemed an eternity to the youngster, the butterfly continued its flight.

Robert Schroeder swooshed his net through the air and captured a monarch butterfly. He took his catch to Brian Campbell, a naturalist at Bear Branch Nature Center, who showed the youngster how to open the butterfly's wings and determine its sex. Campbell documented information about the butterfly, placed a small sticker on one of its wings, and then sat it on Robert's nose. "That feels strange," he said, as the butterfly slowly opened and closed its wings across his nose. After what seemed an eternity to the youngster, the butterfly continued its flight.

About 160 million people with incomes a fifth or less than the average U.S. income live less than 1,500 miles from our southern border. Given this huge income gap, more border agents and more miles of fence cannot prevent substantial illegal migration. But such migration is actually the United States' most effective foreign aid program, helping some of the poorest people in the world. Some believe such migration should be tolerated, not fought to the death. A look at history suggests that even as illegal migration ebbs and flows, it will remain a problem for the United States.

People started to get out of Maryland in a big way last year. Yes, the Census Bureau estimate for 2006 shows the state gained in population - but that's because births far outnumbered deaths, and more than 21,000 immigrants arrived here from abroad. There's another category, though, and it tells a different story: 25,000 more people moved out of Maryland than into Maryland from elsewhere in the United States. The biggest losers? Montgomery and Prince George's counties. The likely culprits?

MIAMI -- The fate of a generation of endangered migratory whooping cranes now rides on the fragile wings of a 10-month-old chick known as No. 15. He is the sole survivor of the Class of 2006, 18 crane hatchlings that followed four costumed ultra-light aircraft from Wisconsin to Florida wintering grounds in December as part of a project to introduce a second migrating population to North America. Conservationists with Operation Migration had originally feared all of the brood had perished in the storm that killed 20 people in central Florida on Friday and put hundreds of residents from their homes.

Biologists studying pronghorn antelope in Wyoming are calling for measures to protect what they say is the longest remaining migration route used by any mammal in the continental United States. Beginning in October each year, as many as 300 antelope leave their summer feeding and fawning areas in Grand Teton National Park, and walk more than 175 miles to lower winter grazing land between Pinedale and Rock Springs in southwest Wyoming. From March to June, they follow the same route in reverse, part of it crossing high mountains and threading narrow canyons.