Understanding the patterns, extent, and phenology of migration is important for estimating potential influences of habitat or climate changes on populations of migratory birds. We used satellite telemetry of 100 individual King Eiders (Somateria spectabilis) tagged in northwestern North America in 2002–2006 to describe the timing and extent of their migration and winter movements in the Bering ...

Avian haemosporidia have been reported in various birds of Japan, which is part of the East Asian-Australian flyway and is an important stopover site for migratory birds potentially carrying new pathogens from other areas. We investigated the prevalence of avian malaria in injured wild birds, rescued in Tokyo and surrounding areas. We also evaluated the effects of migration by examining the pre...

Since 1899 ringing (or banding) remained the most important source of information about migration routes, stopover sites and wintering grounds for birds that are too small to carry satellite-based tracking systems. Despite the large quantity of migrating birds ringed in their breeding areas in Europe, the number of ring recoveries from sub-Saharan Africa is very low and therefore the whereabout...

Seasonal migratory birds return to the same breeding and wintering grounds year after year, and migratory long-distance shorebirds are good examples of this. These tasks require learning and long-term spatial memory abilities that are integrated into a navigational system for repeatedly locating breeding, wintering, and stopover sites. Previous investigations focused on the neurobiological basi...

BACKGROUND Avian influenza viruses (AIV) have been detected in wild birds in West Africa during the northern winter, but no information is available on a potential year-round circulation of AIV in West Africa. Such year-round circulation would allow reassortment opportunities between strains circulating in Afro-tropical birds and strains imported by migratory birds wintering in West Africa. O...

There have been numerous recent observations of changes in the behavior and dynamics of migratory bird populations, but the plasticity of the migratory trait and our inability to track small animals over large distances have hindered investigation of the mechanisms behind migratory change. We used habitat-specific stable isotope signatures to show that recently evolved allopatric wintering popu...

BACKGROUND Describing migratory connectivity in mobile animals is crucial for understanding the selective pressures acting on different populations throughout their life cycle. Tracking single individuals has provided valuable data, but for most species the data available are still spurious and usually limited to a few individuals. Since different populations of migratory birds can be distingui...

The identification of the sensory cues and mechanisms by which migratory birds are able to reach the same breeding and wintering grounds year after year has eluded biologists despite more than 50 years of intensive study. While a number of environmental cues have been proposed to play a role in the navigation of birds, arguments still persist about which cues are essential for the experience ba...

Predicting how migratory animals respond to changing climatic conditions requires knowledge of how climatic events affect each phase of the annual cycle and how those effects carry-over to subsequent phases. We utilized a 17-year migration dataset to examine how El Niño-Southern Oscillation climatic events in geographically different regions of the Western hemisphere carry-over to impact the st...