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Spatial Behaviour at Stopovers

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Passerine Migration

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Abstract

This chapter deals with the range, direction and pattern of diurnal movements of nocturnal passerine migrants at stopovers. Contrary to the popular assumption, these movements are shown not to be directed generally towards the goal of migration, but to be purely habitat-related. The results of the original studies of territoriality vs. broad movements at stopovers are reported together with the critical re-analysis of literature data. I discuss the benefits and pitfalls of visual observations of marked individuals, capture-recapture studies and radio tracking. I also analyse an ambiguous impact of current fuel stores on spatial behaviour of songbirds at stopover. The main factor that governs spatial use of stopover migrants is the spatial distribution of food, clumped versus relatively uniform. If the food is uniformly distributed in space and predictable in time, migrants occupy and sometimes defend small home ranges. The species whose preferred food varies broadly in space and time, make broad movements at stopovers more often than not.

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  1. Biological Station Rybachy, Zoological Institute, Universitetskaya nab. 1, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia

    Nikita Chernetsov

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Chernetsov, N. (2012). Spatial Behaviour at Stopovers. In: Passerine Migration. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29020-6_6

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