Date: Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 9:09 AM
Subject: [birders] : Bird Watchers Help Science Fill Gaps in the Migratory Story - The New York Times
Subject: Bird Watchers Help Science Fill Gaps in the Migratory Story - The New York Times
Bird Watchers Help Science Fill Gaps in the Migratory Story
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
We all know birds in North America fly south for the winter and revisit us come spring, but have you ever wondered what their journey looks like once they leave our backyards?
Ornithologists from Cornell University developed this migration map to show a year's worth of travels for more than a hundred bird species across the Western Hemisphere. Each dot represents a different avian group as it flies thousands of miles to breed and feast. To create the map, the researchers used data from more than a million observations made by amateur bird watchers through eBird, a citizen science project.
"This is the first comprehensive picture of where these birds are moving across the entire year," said Frank La Sorte, an ornithologist at Cornell and one of the map creators. It would have cost millions of dollars to gather the information needed to reconstruct the trajectories with traditional tracking methods, he said. "Even if we tracked hundreds and hundreds of birds, we would not get this level of detail."
Dr. La Sorte said that through their analysis, first published last week in a biological research journal, he and his colleagues attempted to address what they consider the "big question in migration ecology": What migration strategies do birds use to journey across the Western Hemisphere?
They found three general types of trajectories, including clockwise movement, counterclockwise movement, and a doubling back along the same path.
Birds that fly over the eastern portion of North America tend to follow routes that make large clockwise loops. In autumn they travel south through the Atlantic into the Caribbean and South America, and then in spring they loop back north through the Gulf of Mexicoand via a route that is further inland than their previous one. This path enables species like the American Golden-Plover and Blackpoll Warbler to take advantage of strong winds that help propel them in their desired direction.
Flocks that travel over the western portion of the continent, like the Hermit Warbler and the Dusky Flycatcher, do not make dramatic loops like their eastern counterparts. Instead they tend to follow the same track along mountain and river corridors through Mexico, Central and South America in both the fall and spring. In the middle of the continent, birds use all three strategies, though counterclockwise migrations are more common here than elsewhere, Dr. La Sorte said.
Dr. La Sorte's team plans to add additional species to the Western Hemisphere map and encourage bird watchers in Africa and Asia to contribute to the project so they can map bird migrations across the globe.
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