Latest blog entries
By Samuel Temidayo Osinubi, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology
Migration strategies within the tropics are still poorly understood as are the drivers of movement and the degree of connectivity between sites in migrant birds that have their global range and life cycle exclusively on a single continent – intra-continental migrants. On this side of the Atlantic, the plan is to establish an intra-African bird migration project.
The MLSG organised a two-day satellite symposium just before the official EOU conference earlier this year in August. We had about 70 official attendees with another 20 or so dropping in informally, particularly on the day the EOU official started. Thirty nine attendees gave presentations – short summaries of these are given below. A visual impression can be found here, more info in text below.
Recent publications
Graeme M. Buchanan, John W. Mallord, Christopher J. Orsman, Japheth T. Roberts, Kwame Boafo, Roger Q. Skeen, Robin C. Whytock, Mark F. Hulme, Tsetagho Guilain, Gabriel H. Segniagbeto, Délagnon Assou & Juliet A. Vickery 2018. Changes in the area of optimal tree cover of a declining Afro‐Palaearctic migrant across the species’ wintering range Ibis View online
Verner P. Bingman 2018. Requiem for a heavyweight – can anything more be learned from homing pigeons about the sensory and spatial-representational basis of avian navigation? Journal of Experimental Biology View online
Felix Liechti, Janine Aschwanden, Jan Blew, Mathieu Boos, Robin Brabant, Adriaan M. Dokter, Vladislav Kosarev, Maryna Lukach, Mercedes Maruri, Maarten Reyniers, Inbal Schekler, Heiko Schmaljohann, Baptiste Schmid, Nadja Weisshaupt & Nir Sapir 2018. Cross‐calibration of different radar systems for monitoring nocturnal bird migration across Europe and the Near East Ecography View online
Damaris Zurell, Catherine H. Graham, Laure Gallien, Wilfried Thuiller & Niklaus E. Zimmermann 2018. Long-distance migratory birds threatened by multiple independent risks from global change Nature Climate Change View online
László Bozó, Tibor Csörgő and Wieland Heim 2018. Weather conditions affect spring and autumn migration of Siberian leaf warblers Avian Research View online
Latest news
13 - 16 December, Gdansk, Poland
A joint conference of the "Birds as Early Warning Systems" of the Poland–South Africa collaboration project, the Migrant Landbird Study Group, and the Polish Network of Bird Ringing Stations (KSSOP) - more info here
Deadline has been extended to 14 October!
More info and to sign up, see here
Point Blue Conservation Science is seeking one volunteer research assistant to work on Southeast Farallon Island, 30 miles west of San Francisco, California as part of a study examining the migratory movement of parulid warblers.
Insectivorous birds consume an estimated 400-500 million tons of prey annually
The Science of Nature
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-018-1571-z
By Martin Nyffeler, Çağan Şekercioğlu & Christopher Whelan
For the first time, the predation impact of the insectivorous birds has been quantified on a global scale based on 103 (for the most part published) studies of prey consumption (kg per ha per season) of insectivorous birds in seven terrestrial biome types (i.e., tropical forests, temperate/boreal forests, tropical grasslands/savannas, temperate grasslands, croplands, deserts, and Arctic tundra).
Ten years tracking the migrations of small landbirds: Lessons learned in the golden age of bio-logging
The Auk Ornithological Advances
doi.org/10.1642/AUK-17-202.1
By Emily McKinnon and Oliver Love
Since miniature light-level geolocators were first deployed on small songbirds (2007), our understanding of migration for this group has grown exponentially. In this paper, 127 studies were reviewed that used geolocators to track small landbirds.
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