Abstract
Small birds migrating at night are shown to be clumped rather than randomly dispersed in space in about half of 12 observation sessions. The suggestion is made that the spatial clumping may be a passive or active response to atmospheric motion rather than (or in addition to) social flocking. Wind shear, which commonly generates small-scale structure, was found to be correlated with clumpedness on the part of the birds in four sessions for which wind data were available.
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© 1982 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Larkin, R.P. (1982). Spatial Distribution of Migrating Birds and Small-Scale Atmospheric Motion. In: Papi, F., Wallraff, H.G. (eds) Avian Navigation. Proceedings in Life Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68616-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68616-0_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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