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Temporal Pattern and Energy Cost of Migratory Flight

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Passerine Migration

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Abstract

I claim that the currently widely accepted concept that migratory take-offs occur within a narrow time window soon after the sunset is not generally correct. Observation and radio-tracking data show that in a number of songbird migrants departures occur well into the night. The body mass and fuel stores of departing migrants vary broadly; a substantial proportion of birds take off with low fuel stores that do not allow them to fly throughout the night. Some migrants perform reverse migration during the night; however, others probably make short flights in the seasonally appropriate migratory direction. Our field data on the body mass loss during the flights support the recent wind tunnel measurements that suggest that migratory flight in long-distance migrants is significantly less expensive than was hitherto assumed: some 6–7 times basal metabolic rate (BMR), not 10–12 times BMR.

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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). Temporal Pattern and Energy Cost of Migratory Flight. In: Passerine Migration. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29020-6_7

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