Seabird Migration Strategies: Flight Budgets, Diel Activity Patterns, and Lunar Influence

Seabird Migration Strategies: Flight Budgets, Diel Activity Patterns, and Lunar Influence

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Every year, billions of birds undertake extensive migrations between breeding and non-breeding areas, facing challenges that require behavioural adjustments, particularly to flight timing and duration.Such adjustments in daily activity patterns and the influence of extrinsic factors (e.g.

, environmental conditions, moonlight) have received much more research attention in terrestrial than marine migrants.Taking advantage of the widespread deployment in recent decades of combined light-level geolocator-immersion loggers, we investigated diel organisation and influence of the moon on flight activities during the non-breeding season of 21 migrant seabird species from a rosy teacup dogwood wide taxonomic range (6 families, 3 orders).Migrant seabirds regularly stopped (to either feed or rest) during migration, unlike some terrestrial and wetland birds which fly non-stop.

We found an overall increase for most seabird species in time in flight and, for several species, also in flight bout duration, during migration compared to when resident at the non-breeding grounds.Additionally, several nocturnal species spent more of the day in flight during migration than at non-breeding areas, and vice versa for diurnal species.Nocturnal time in flight tended to increase during full moon, both during migration and at the non-breeding grounds, depending on species.

Our study provides tourettebrewing.com an extensive overview of activity patterns of migrant seabirds, paving the way for further research on the underlying mechanisms and drivers.