Migration at the Limit: More-than-human creativity and catastrophe

This chapter explores bird migration as a way of thinking through the limits of life. Many birds are migratory. These migratory habits are normally understood as a response to the seasonally variable inhabitability of the world and as a practical response by birds to changeable circumstances that enables an exploration of ongoing life and its limits. New developments in monitoring and tracking birds have enabled researchers to learn more about their migrations, particularly changing strategies and routes in the face of environmental change. Migration also gathers together different places that birds use on their journeying, with changes in one place, such as shifting seasonalities and food availability, having knock-on effects in others, such as where the birds breed. Migration also provides a way to think about the challenges of a bird’s life and the limits of its existence. Migrating birds often find themselves off-course or ‘out-of-place’, but these novel situations offer potential for new understandings of life, both for birds and humans. The ways in which bird migration and its challenges are understood are re-framed through the issue of Maccagno’s ‘anthropology of the limit’ and Ingold’s arguments for wayfaring rather than navigation. These themes are explored through a series of case studies: Barnacle and Brent Geese in Europe and Japan; Yellow-browed Warblers shifting their migration routes from Asia to Europe via fleeting stopovers on exposed Scottish headlands; and endangered Spoon-billed Sandpipers migrating between Siberia and southeast Asia.