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Is there a different response to winds during migration between soaring and flapping raptors? An example with the Montagu’s harrier and the lesser kestrel

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Abstract

During migrations, birds have to cope with varying meteorological conditions, which shape their migratory routes and affect their performance. Amongst these, wind is the main meteorological agent influencing behaviour of birds in their migration journeys. Here we analyze the effect of winds during migrations of adult individuals of two raptor species tracked with satellite telemetry, the Montagu’s harrier (Circus pygargus) and the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni). While harriers use mostly soaring flight, kestrels principally use flapping flight and thus, wind can differently affect these birds. We found that both forward and perpendicular winds significantly affected the movements of the Montagu’s harrier, which were drifted from their intended direction but also took advantage of tailwinds. On the contrary, lesser kestrels moved more regardless of forward winds, despite they were highly drifted by crosswinds. Our results also support that the drifting effect of winds at the onset of the spring migration may explain the loop migration observed for both species, with birds compensating later the effect of crosswinds to arrive to their breeding areas. Results presented here illustrate how winds can differently affect migrating birds according to their flight modes.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Aeropuerto de Castellón and FCC-Energía/Enerstar Villena S.A. for funding the satellite tracking projects of Montagu’s harriers and lesser kestrels, respectively. We are thankful to Servicio de Biodiversidad (Conselleria de Infraestructuras, Territorio y Medio Ambiente), especially to Juan Jiménez and Juan Antonio Gómez for collaboration and giving all the necessary permissions for bird’s tagging. We are grateful to H. Schmaljohann and an anonymous referee for very useful comments that improve the manuscript. R.L. had a postdoctoral grant (Reference 10/12-C) co-funded by Consejería de Educación y Ciencia (Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha) and the European Social Fund during the development of this study. U.M. is supported by an FPU grant of the Spanish Ministry of Education (AP2008-0947). This paper is part of the PhD thesis of M.R. at the University of Alicante.

Ethical standards

This work complies with the current environmental laws in Spain, and all necessary permissions to catch and deploy PTTs on tracked species were provided by the regional government (Conselleria de Infraestructuras, Territorio y Medio Ambiente; Generalitat Valenciana).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that no conflict of interest exists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Estación Biológica Terra Natura, Instituto Universitario de Investigación CIBIO, Universidad de Alicante, Apdo. Correos 99, 03080, Alicante, Spain

    Ruben Limiñana, Marta Romero, Ugo Mellone & Vicente Urios

  2. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC), CSIC-UCLM-JCCM, Ronda de Toledo, s/n., 13071, Ciudad Real, Spain

    Ruben Limiñana

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  1. Ruben Limiñana
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  2. Marta Romero
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Correspondence to Ruben Limiñana.

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Communicated by W. Wiltschko

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Limiñana, R., Romero, M., Mellone, U. et al. Is there a different response to winds during migration between soaring and flapping raptors? An example with the Montagu’s harrier and the lesser kestrel. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 67, 823–835 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-013-1506-9

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