For Centuries, People Thought Birds Flew to the Moon During Winter—Until an Arrow Shot in Africa Landed in Germany

Spring is a time I’ve always loved, especially with the return of swallows and storks. After a long winter, they return home to their nests. Imagine the surprise if one of those storks showed up in your town one fine day with a 31.5-inch arrow piercing its neck.

That’s exactly what happened in a German town in 1822. And far from being a simple anecdote, it became a turning point in solving the mystery of where birds went in winter.

Doubt. Today, bird migration is basic school knowledge. But just a few centuries ago, people had no idea why birds disappeared in the fall and reappeared in the spring. The idea that tiny birds could travel thousands of miles without stopping was unthinkable, so early thinkers came up with theories—some imaginative, others absurd.

One of those answers, surprisingly, involved space travel.

Alien birds. In the 17th century, Harvard scholar Charles Morton suggested that some birds vanished in winter because they had migrated to the Moon. It might sound ridiculous now, but in a world without scientific tools or data, it was an attempt to explain a real mystery.

Birds disappeared for months. Since people could see the Moon from Massachusetts but had no idea what lay across the oceans, the Moon felt like a reasonable answer. Morton wasn’t alone in his guesses. In the 4th century B.C., Aristotle proposed that birds might transform into other species or hibernate underwater. Morton rejected that theory as too far-fetched—ironically, in favor of lunar migration.

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The arrow. Morton even calculated that the trip to the Moon would take about a month each way, with birds surviving on body fat while sleeping most of the time. Absurd or not, it was a serious hypothesis in its day. Eventually, though, a better theory began to take hold: birds traveled somewhere else on Earth. Then came the proof—a stork.

In 1822, someone in northern Germany shot a stork. The bird fell, revealing a 31.5-inch arrow lodged in its neck. The real question wasn’t how it could still fly—it was where that arrow had come from.

Pfeilstorch, the stork that flew from Africa to Germany pierced by an arrow.

Pfeilstorch. The stork’s body went to the University of Rostock, where researchers identified the arrow as a weapon used in central Africa. The implication was clear: The stork had flown more than 1,800 miles from Africa, where it had wintered, back to Germany. It hadn’t transformed, hibernated underwater, or flown to the Moon—it had migrated.

Researchers preserved the stork, later nicknamed Pfeilstorch (German for “arrowed stork”), in the Zoological Collection at the University of Rostock, recognizing its value to science and ornithology. It confirmed what many had started to suspect: Migratory birds head south during European winters and return with the spring.

The key. This stork wasn’t unique. Researchers found other large birds across Europe with foreign arrows embedded in their bodies. These birds demonstrated remarkable resilience—if the injury wasn’t fatal, they continued flying and functioning as usual.

In 1899, Danish teacher H.C. Mortensen introduced the practice of placing rings on birds’ legs. That allowed researchers to systematically study and confirm that birds returning in spring were the same ones that left before winter.

The arrow fired in Africa and retrieved in Germany became the first form of bird tracking—an extraordinary coincidence that gave science its first solid evidence of bird migration.

Image | Ahmet Yüksek ✪ (Unsplash) | Zoologische Sammlung der Universität Rostock 

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