The Migrating Sky — 渡りの空

An interactive work from Música Terra PLAYGROUND in which you accompany real migratory birds and travel through a year along their actual flyways and seasonal rhythms. Turn the dial of the year and the flocks cross a map drawn with real coastlines and real elevation; join a flock and you travel in the light of that day and hour, looking out at the real skylines of places such as Izumi, Izunuma, Hyoko and Rausu. The routes are schematics reconstructed from satellite and geolocator tracking records and published literature; timings and figures are published values.

The 24 migratory birds and the protagonists of their journeys

Hooded Crane — from the Amur basin to Izumi (Hooded Crane — one family)
Barn Swallow — from the satoyama of Honshu to Borneo (Barn Swallow — she of the eaves)
Oriental Honey Buzzard — by different roads in spring and autumn, from the mountains of Honshu to the Malay Peninsula (Oriental Honey Buzzard — a tracked male)
Latham's Snipe — from the moors of Hokkaido, across the Pacific to Australia (Latham's Snipe — one bird in 2016)
Arctic Tern — from the Arctic summer to the Antarctic summer (Arctic Tern — she who lives long)
Grey-faced Buzzard — from the mountains of Honshu, island by island down the Nansei chain, to Borneo (Grey-faced Buzzard — four tracked birds)
Greater White-fronted Goose — from the tundra of eastern Siberia, by Miyajimanuma, to Izunuma (Greater White-fronted Goose — a flock of a hundred thousand)
Whooper Swan — from the Kolyma lands, by Lake Kutcharo, to Izunuma (Whooper Swan — birds with names)
Tundra Swan — from the Arctic tundra, by Sakhalin, to Hyoko (Tundra Swan — Nijika)
Spoon-billed Sandpiper — from the Chukotka tundra, by the Yellow Sea, to the Gulf of Mottama (Spoon-billed Sandpiper — ET)
Black-faced Spoonbill — from the islands off western Korea, across the Yellow Sea to Taiwan (Black-faced Spoonbill — M03)
Aleutian Cackling Goose — from the Kuril Islands, through a sky people gave back, to Miyagi (Aleutian Cackling Goose — descendants of birds sent home)
Pacific Swift — from Sakhalin, around the continent, to Australia (Pacific Swift — three birds with geolocators)
White-naped Crane — from the marshes of Dauria, by Cheorwon, to Izumi (White-naped Crane — Izuria)
Bar-tailed Godwit — from Alaska, nonstop across the Pacific to New Zealand (Bar-tailed Godwit — B6, and a lineage of records)
Far Eastern Curlew — from the grasslands of the Amur, by the Yellow Sea, to Australia (Far Eastern Curlew — EC07 and others)
Great Knot — from the mountains of Siberia, nonstop over the Sea of Okhotsk to Australia (Great Knot — accumulated tracking)
Short-tailed Albatross — from Torishima, out onto the wind roads of the North Pacific (Short-tailed Albatross — the bird that came back from extinction)
Streaked Shearwater — from the islands of Japan to the equatorial seas (Streaked Shearwater — the bird of 36 years and 8 months)
Short-tailed Shearwater — from Tasmania, in a figure of eight, to the seas of Japan (Short-tailed Shearwater — a year in a figure of eight)
Steller's Sea Eagle — from Kamchatka, over the drift-ice sea to Hokkaido (Steller's Sea Eagle — with the drift ice)
Eastern Buzzard — from the countryside of Honshu to the Sakhalin summer (Eastern Buzzard — a migratory divide)
Oriental Stork — from the marshes of the Amur to Poyang Lake. A migrant that came back (Oriental Stork — the migrant that came back)
Blue-and-white Flycatcher — the recorded journey of one bird that breeds on the continent (Blue-and-white Flycatcher — one bird that breeds on the continent)

Sources: Wild Bird Society of Japan, Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, Ecosystem Conservation Society–Japan (SwanEyes), satellite-tracking research by Hiroyoshi Higuchi and colleagues, Egevang et al. 2010, BirdLife International, Australasian Wader Study Group, AWS Terrain Tiles, Natural Earth.