While the boreal forest is the endpoint for migration for hundreds of the Western Hemisphere's migratory bird species, it is also the place where millions of birds' lives begin each year. Nearly every Blackpoll Warbler's journey starts when it hatches in the boreal forest, the largest intact forest in the world. Here, in “North America's bird nursery,” more than 80 percent of all Blackpoll Warblers raise their young amid sprawling firs, spruces, and pines in the company of upwards of 300 other migratory bird species.
Every year as the breeding season ends, millions of young birds depart the boreal forest and travel south to non-breeding grounds for the first time. They follow one of four “flyways,” time-tested routes that birds have been traveling for millennia that provide pathways from the boreal back to the tropics.
Learn more: abcbirds.org/boreal-forests/