[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ird wisdom comes slowly sometimes, and sometimes it is delayed by wild tales and total fabrications.

Take the matter of migration, wherein birds leave in one season and return the next.

Aristotle, the renowned philosopher, wrote that swallows often hid in holes in the ground to escape cold weather.  The Bishop of Uppsala wrote about fishermen hauling up nets full of swallows hibernating underwater “among the canes and reeds.”

Even Carolus Linnaeus, the founder of mo...