Numerous accounts of impressive navigational skills and homing behaviour shown by a wide range of animal species prompted Conway Morris (2003) to comment that ‘despite our admiration, wonder, and – if we are candid – even awe, we can surely offer the following paraphrase; evolution happens’. What, beyond anecdote, is the evidence for such phenomena that generated this comment by an eminent evolutionary biologist? Migratory birds are well known to navigate over long distances between feeding grounds and breeding sites, often over thousands of miles, some even homing on small, isolated islands after extensive trans-ocean flights. Moreover, in many cases of such spectacular homing behaviour, one does not have to rely on anecdotal accounts, as Matthews (1968) demonstrated in early studies of the Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus). From a colony of shearwaters nesting on the island of Skokholm off the south west coast of Wales, individual birds were transported away in various compass directions, including westwards across the Atlantic Ocean, and released. The birds were observed as they were released and many quickly showed significant orientation towards home, apparently based on the environmental features around them, even in an unfamiliar location. Most reached their nest sites on Skokholm far more rapidly than they could have done by random searching.