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Nocturnal exploratory flights, departure time, and direction in a migratory songbird

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Abstract

Stopover studies have concentrated so far mostly on mechanisms regulating the temporal organisation on the day-to-day level. Taking advantage of the small and isolated island of Helgoland in the North Sea, we investigated the stopover and departure behaviour of a nocturnal migrant by using radio telemetry. Special attention was paid particularly to nocturnal behaviour, their departure times within the night, and departure directions. Here, we show that Northern Wheatears, Oenanthe oenanthe, performed regularly nocturnal exploratory flights on nights before and on departure night, which might be a common behaviour of nocturnal migrants to evaluate meteorological conditions aloft prior to departure. We proposed that migrants being prepared for an endurance flight would depart early in the night within a short time window, whereas individuals departing with low fuel load would be less prone to take off early. Our data, however, could not support this hypothesis. In respect of the migratory direction, there was a significant correlation between departure direction and departure fuel load. Northern Wheatears with high departure fuel loads headed more towards the north than lean migrants, which departed mostly towards the nearest coastline, i.e. east to south. Thus, birds with high fuel loads showed their seasonally appropriate migratory direction irrespective of the ecological barrier ahead, whereas lean birds avoided this direction. To our knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the relationship of fuel load and departure direction in a free-flying songbird.

Zusammenfassung

In Studien zum Rastverhalten von Zugvögeln wurden bis jetzt hauptsächlich die Mechanismen untersucht, die die zeitliche Organisation des Rastverhaltens auf der Ebene von Tagen steuern. Wir haben das Rast- und Abzugsverhalten eines Nachtziehers mit Hilfe von Radiotelemetrie untersucht und uns dabei die isolierte Lage der kleinen Nordseeinsel Helgoland zu Nutze gemacht. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit galt dem nächtlichen Verhalten, der Abzugszeit in der Nacht, und der Abzugsrichtung. Hier zeigen wir, dass Steinschmätzer Oenanthe oenanthe regelmäßig nächtliche Erkundungsflüge in Nächten vor und während der Abzugsnacht durchführten, was ein typisches Verhalten von Nachtziehern sein könnte, um die Windbedingungen in verschiedenen Höhen zu testen. Wir nahmen an, dass Zugvögel, die ausreichende Reserven für einen Langstreckenflug hatten, früh in der Nacht während eines relativ engen Zeitfensters abziehen würden, wohingegen Individuen mit geringeren Energiereserven wahrscheinlich früh aber auch spät in der Nacht abziehen. Unsere Ergebnisse konnten diese Hypothese allerdings nicht bestätigen. Zwischen der Abzugsrichtung und den Energievorräten beim Abzug bestand ein signifikanter Zusammenhang. Steinschmätzer mit hohen Energiereserven flogen in nördlichere Richtungen als magere Vögel, die zum größten Teil in Richtung der nächstgelegenen Küste, d.h. nach Osten bis Süden, abzogen. Also zeigten Vögel mit großen Energiereserven ihre jahreszeitlich angemessene Abzugsrichtung unabhängig von der vor ihnen liegenden ökologischen Barriere, während magere Vögel diese Richtung vermieden. Unseres Wissens ist dies die erste Studie, die den Zusammenhang zwischen Energievorräten und Abzugsrichtung an Singvögeln im Freiland untersucht.

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Acknowledgments

We are extremely grateful to Franz Bairlein who helped and supported this project in various ways. Volker Dierschke kindly provided some additional data about the release experiments on Helgoland. Continuous field work was only possible because of important support from Ommo Hüppop, Freimut Schramm, Felix Jachmann, and several volunteers of the Institute of Avian Research “Vogelwarte Helgoland”. Meteorological data were kindly supplied by Deutscher Wetterdienst and the NOAA-CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center, Boulder, CO, USA, from their Web site at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/. Northern Wheatears were caught, ringed, and radio-tagged under a licence from the Ministry for Agriculture, the Environment and Rural Areas, Schleswig–Holstein, Germany. We also wish to thank Ulric Lund very much for his advice about circular statistics. We are very grateful for valuable comments on this manuscript to Franz Bairlein, Lukas Jenni, and two anonymous referees.

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  1. Institute of Avian Research, “Vogelwarte Helgoland”, An der Vogelwarte 21, 26386, Wilhelmshaven, Germany

    Heiko Schmaljohann, Philipp J. J. Becker, Hakan Karaardic & Celia Grande

  2. Department of Biology, Art & Science Faculty, Akdeniz University, 07058, Antalya, Turkey

    Hakan Karaardic

  3. Swiss Ornithological Institute, Luzernerstrasse 6, 6204, Sempach, Switzerland

    Felix Liechti & Beat Naef-Daenzer

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  1. Heiko Schmaljohann
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Correspondence to Heiko Schmaljohann.

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Schmaljohann, H., Becker, P.J.J., Karaardic, H. et al. Nocturnal exploratory flights, departure time, and direction in a migratory songbird. J Ornithol 152, 439–452 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-010-0604-y

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