Barrier crossing in small avian migrants: individual tracking reveals prolonged nocturnal flights into the day as a common migratory strategy.

ABSTRACT: Over decades it has been unclear how individual migratory songbirds cross large ecological barriers such as seas or deserts. By deploying light-level geolocators on four songbird species weighing only about 12 g, we found that these otherwise mainly nocturnal migrants seem to regularly extend their nocturnal flights into the day when crossing the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea. The proportion of the proposed diurnally flying birds gradually declined over the day with similar landing patterns in autumn and spring. The prolonged flights were slightly more frequent in spring than in autumn, suggesting tighter migratory schedules when returning to breeding sites. Often we found several patterns for barrier crossing for the same individual in autumn compared to the spring journey. As o

SUBMITTER: Adamik P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4753512 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature