Watch this amazing piece of creationist propaganda:
If you watch this clip all the way through, one gets the impression that these Pacifc golden plovers summer only in Alaska and winter only in Hawaii.
How on earth could they have evolved the ability to find those two distinct yet quite disparate places on earth?
What they don’t tell you is that Pacific golden plovers are much more widespread.
They winter in both Alaska and Northeast Asia, and they migrate south, not just to Hawaii but all over the South Asia, Australasia, and the South Pacific. Very few actually migrate to Hawaii. Some go to California.
Unlike Canada geese and mallard ducks, they don’t have parents that show them where to migrate.
However, it’s very likely that all Pacific golden plovers have an instinct to fly north and south when the hours of sunlight become shorter or longer. In the tropics, the sunlight period is about the same every day, but it does vary a bit, especially when the birds migrate a greater distance from the equator.
And we know that birds are very sensitive to how many hours of daylight they experience. It is the length of day that makes most of the nonmigratory songbirds here that makes them start singing. It’s not unusual to hear cardinals singing in the middle of snowstorms, should the snowstorms come in late February or early March.
The near 24 hour sunlight in Alaska and Northeast Asia makes that region very productive as an ecosystem during the summer months, but if a bird tried to remain there during the winter, it would likely freeze or starve to death.
So there are many, many birds that summer in Alaska and fly south for the winter. It’s likely that this migratory behavior would be highly selected for in populations of these birds.
These birds also have evolved a tendency to fly a great distance so they can live in the tropics during the winter. Wintering in the tropics might give some of these birds a bit more of an advantage when they fly back to their breeding grounds in the winter, and there would be a selection pressure on the population for birds that could fly south a very long way from the breeding grounds.
And what’s more, it turns out that juvenile birds don’t have the same migration routes as the adults.
That means the instinct is for these bird to fly south a great distance.
That’s all it is.
It can be explained very nicely through evolution.
But if you accept the premise that these birds only summer in Alaska and winter in Hawaii, then that would be hard for evolutionary processes to explain.
But because they left that part out– either out of dishonesty or simple ignorance– it appears they have a good case that evolution can’t explain.
When all the facts are understood, they have absolutely no case.
So once again creationism fails.
It requires either ignorance or dishonesty for this claim to work out– as do all creationist claims.
Not only is there a very reasonable explanation as you point out but the creationist argument is a bit self-defeating anyway. To point out that this requires some amazing design and say only God could do it makes it sound like they are saying (and I think they are) that God just made these birds with this ability to know were Hawaii and Alaska and and give them the instinct in special creation. But, for the YEC, Hawaii didn’t exist before the flood and the pre-flood environment or original creation didn’t have dramatic seasons or needs for migration so how is it that these birds lived for 2000 years hopped on board the Ark and then made a beeline for Hawaii knowing that now they could finally obey their programming to migrate 2000 miles over open ocean.
I see this kind of argument for design all the time as if it is supporting special creation when it really points to adaptation/natural selection even in a young earth framework.
The problem with Creationists claiming to be disproving evolution or an old earth is that they know so little about biology or geology anything else that they’re incapable of doing anything other than sounding like fools.
Another interesting migratory species is the Michigander snowbird. They spend spring, summer, fall in Michigan and then make their way to Florida for the cold months. Physical characteristics include white or gray topknot and legs bare below the knee. Often can be found basking in the sunlight.,Each has his/her own regular roosting places.
I call them snowbirds, too, but the “bird experts” call them dark-eyed juncos.
This “creationist” theory is such obvious nonsense, so why waste time discussing something which cannot exist?