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Fit with tiny backpacks, songbirds reveal speed of migration at 311 miles a day Jeremy Hance mongabay.com February 12, 2009 Songbirds astonish scientists with speed of their migration, covering 311 miles a day Bridget Stutchbury and her team attached the geo-locator backpacks to 14 wood thrushes and 20 purple martins in Pennsylvania in 2007. In the summer of 2008 the scientists were able to retrieve the geo-locators from five of the wood thrushes and two of the purple martins.
The data taken from the geo-locators surprised everyone. Stutchbury and her team discovered that during their migrations between Pennsylvania and South America songbirds flew more than 311 miles a day, three times higher than previous estimates. In addition, they found that the songbirds were more leisurely about their fall migration: the return migration to Pennsylvania in the spring ran between two and six times faster than the fall migration. "We were flabbergasted by the birds' spring return times. To have a bird leave Brazil on April 12 and be home by the end of the month was just astounding. We always assumed they left sometime in March," Stutchbury said.
"Tracking birds to their wintering areas is also essential for predicting the impact of tropical habitat loss and climate change," she said. "Until now, our hands have been tied in many ways, because we didn't know where the birds were going. They would just disappear and then come back in the spring. It's wonderful to now have a window into their journey." Songbird populations have been in global decline for decades. A number of possible causes have been identified, including increased uses of pesticides, habitat loss due to deforestation and urban sprawl, acid rain, feral and pet cats, and exotic plants. However having data as to where the birds migrate—and stops along the way—should allow scientists to pinpoint the exact causes for declines in specific species. Using this new data, researchers hope to create effective conservation programs.
"The [British Antarctic Survey] hadn't really been thinking of [attaching them to] songbirds, but when I saw the technology, I knew we could do this," she said. CITATION: Bridget J. M. Stutchbury, Scott A. Tarof, Tyler Done, Elizabeth Gow, Patrick M. Kramer, John Tautin, James W. Fox, Vsevolod Afanasyev (2009) Tracking Long-Distance Songbird Migration by Using Geolocators. Science, Volume 323. Related articles The end of migrations: wildlife's greatest spectacle is critically endangered (07/28/2008) If we could turn back the clock about 200 years, one could watch as millions of whales swam along their migration routes. Around 150 years ago, one could witness bison filling the vast America prairie or a billion passenger pigeons blotting out the sky for days. Only a few decades back and a million saiga antelope could be seen crossing the plains of Asia. Rare giant bat eats night-flying birds (02/13/2007) A new study published in PLoS ONE, an open online journal, reports that nocturnally migrating songbirds are preyed upon by giant bats. The findings go against the belief that night-flying birds lacked predators. City life causes song birds to change their tune (12/04/2006) Cities cause birds to change their songs according to research published in the December 5th issue of the journal Current Biology. SHARE THIS ARTICLE:
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