Migratory flight on the Pacific Flyway: strategies and tendencies of wind drift compensation.

ABSTRACT: Applications of remote sensing data to monitor bird migration usher a new understanding of magnitude and extent of movements across entire flyways. Millions of birds move through the western USA, yet this region is understudied as a migratory corridor. Characterizing movements in the Pacific Flyway offers a unique opportunity to study complementary patterns to those recently highlighted in the Atlantic and Central Flyways. We use weather surveillance radar data from spring and autumn (1995-2018) to examine migrants' behaviours in relation to winds in the Pacific Flyway. Overall, spring migrants tended to drift on winds, but less so at northern latitudes and farther inland from the Pacific coastline. Relationships between winds and autumn flight behaviours were less striking, with no latitu

SUBMITTER: Newcombe PB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6769149 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature