Date: January 22, 2019
Source: University of Guelph
Each
year, migratory birds journey from their breeding grounds to their wintering
grounds, making pit stops along the way.
Now a
first-ever University of Guelph study has uncovered precisely when and where
tree swallows -- a common migratory bird -- stop during flights that can span
more than 3,500 kilometres across North America. The findings tell us more
about migration and help us understand threats faced by the birds throughout
the journey, said Prof. Ryan Norris, Department of Integrative Biology.
"Migratory
birds are really just visitors up here," said Norris, who worked on the
study with post-doc researcher Elizabeth Gow, which was conducted in Norris
Lab. "They breed for a couple of months and then spend the rest of the
year in migration and at their tropical wintering grounds. If we are to make
any progress towards understanding what is causing their declines, we need to
know how these stages of the annual cycle are linked."
Published
recently in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study is
the first to track the timing of 12 geographically distinct North American
breeding populations of tree swallows across the continent. Previous studies
have followed just one population at a single latitude.
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