Radar quantifies migrant concentration and Dawn reorientation at a Great Lakes shoreline.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Millions of flying migrants encounter the Great Lakes and other large water bodies on long-distance flights each spring and fall, but quantitative data regarding how they traverse these obstacles are limited. Shorelines are known areas of migrant concentration due to the ecological barrier effect, but details on the magnitude of this concentration and the flight behaviors causing it are largely unknown and difficult to quantify. Mobile avian radar can provide a unique view of how birds and bats move across landscapes by tracking thousands of individual migrants moving through a sample volume that extends multiple kilometers in radius.

Results

During the spring of 2014 we used two avian radar units to compare migration patterns at shoreline (1.5 km from the shore)

SUBMITTER: Heist KW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6114834 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature