Migration Ecology Group

See the thread of our group member about one of our papers:

1. Yellow-browed Warbler tagged in 2025! 🤩

On September 24, @annikapeter.bsky.social tagged the first Yellow-browed warbler (Phylloscopus inornatus) on Helgoland in 2025 to study its migratory behaviour. Stay tuned for fascinating bird tracks!

#Motus #Tracking #Birdmigration

(vii) Over all species, the departure direction within the first 1-10 km does not change from Helgoland towards the coastline within 50-100 km flight distance.

(vi) departure direction from Helgoland only aligned with ring recovery directions in Redstart, Robin and Dunnock, all towards a nortwesterly direction (as expected). Wheatears depart significantly to southeast (why?) and Garden warbers depart in a random direction (why?).

(iv) the more fat the bird has, the more motivated it is to depart

(v) the more fat the bird has, the earlier the bird departs within the night

(iii) There is no difference in the time of night, when the birds depart, except, that Dunnocks depart during morning dawn and all other species during evening dusk - interestingly both at the same sun´s angle below horizon!

(ii) Trans-Saharan migrants are less selective to wind conditions for departure. All species are similarly prone to overcast, meaning they are less motivated to migrate, when the sky is cloudy

(i) stopover duration of trans-saharan migrants is shorter

Stopover departure decisions in spring: pre-Saharan migrants stay longer and are more selective for favourable wind than trans-Saharan migrants - Movement Ecology Birds that breed in Europe and winter south of the Sahara, so-called trans-Saharan migrants, generally migrate longer distances than pre-Saharan migrants. The latter are expected to be less time constrained during autumn migration than the former. As such, pre-Saharan migrants are assumed to be more selective for favourable weather conditions and are more likely to minimise energy cost of migration than trans-Saharan migrants. While this pattern is supported for autumn migration, it is less well understood for spring migration. Since the optimal arrival timing at the breeding areas is generally under selection pressure to arrive ‘early’, i.e. before ‘competitors’, and since this advantage is likely to hold across migration strategies, we predict that the general differences in decision making between pre- and trans-Saharan migrants will also be manifested during spring migration. We radio-tracked three trans-Saharan (Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus, Garden Warbler Sylvia borin and Northern Wheatear Oenanthe oenanthe) and two pre-Saharan (European Robin Erithacus rubecula and Dunnock Prunella modularis) migrants during stopover using a regional network of Motus receiving stations. We analysed the night-to-night and within-night departure decisions in relation to weather and energy stores, and compared species’ departure direction with the location of their ring recoveries. Trans-Saharan migrants stopped-over shorter and were less selective for favourable wind conditions than pre-Saharan migrants. The positive effect of high energy stores and low cloud cover on departure probability was a consistent pattern. Within-night departure times did not differ between migration strategies. Departure directions were in line with geographical mean location of ring recoveries for Common Redstart, European Robin and Dunnock. Our results suggest that pre-Saharan migrants are less time-constrained and follow an energy-saving strategy more strongly than trans-Saharan migrants that seem to have a stronger urge to migrate fast in spring. Since a similar pattern exists for autumn migration, we suggest that how the species-specific migration strategies and associated time constraints affect stopover decision making in both migration seasons is a general mechanism in migratory songbirds.

citation:
Klinner, T.*, Karwinkel, T.*, Packmor, F., & Schmaljohann, H. (2025). Stopover departure decisions in spring: pre-Saharan migrants stay longer and are more selective for favourable wind than trans-Saharan migrants. Movement Ecology, 13(1), 64. doi.org/10.1186/s404...

the 5 study species: Dunnock, Northern Wheatear, European Robin, Common Redstart, Garden Warbler

NEW PUBLICATION on stopover ecology of Songbirds during spring migration: After packmor et al. 2020 (Mov Ecol) found that trans-Saharan migrants react differently to weather for migratory departure, we aked ourselves, whether this is also valid for spring migration? 🐦
a thread 🧵 on 7 hypotheses:

Meet Lasse,

He‘ll support the working group as a volunteer for the next year, hoping to learn and observe scientific work in the process. While his interests lay elsewhere beforehand, he‘s become curios about the groups work and likes to try to think along :)

This week we were at #BESMove2025, where @giovannasandretti.bsky.social presented our results on the overlooked pre-migratory flights.
The conference title of this year was "Understanding Migration", and she came back home full of fresh insights and great new connections!

Our group is now also involved in the education of future biology teachers here at the University of Oldenburg #birdringing #birdbanding #birdmigration

Join us in the migration ecology group at the University of Oldenburg! 📡🐦🐥

A very nice #EOU2025 @eounion.bsky.social conference in Bangor, Wales, with @thiemokarwinkel.bsky.social (hosting a symposium on #MOTUS bird tracking) and @wielandheim.bsky.social (summarizing recent advances in landbird migration studies along the Asian flyways) representing our group 🕊️🐦📡

Great fun canoeing along the Wümme river near Bremen with the @migecol.bsky.social team!

Excellent food and some nice birds as well, incl. White-tailed Eagle, Black Kite, Kingfisher, Reed Buntings ...and a Cockatiel 😄 #birding

New paper on Siberian Barn Swallow migration by our group´s @wielandheim.bsky.social

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Our volunteer Annika releasing a Common Kingfisher captured for scientific studies

Meet (F)Annika!

She is helping the working group as a volunteer (oeko-freiwillig.de) and gets to do all the “fun” things (as Heiko would say :)) - such as supporting field work. She has always been interested in birds, but over the past few months she has learned to truly admire them.

Abstract submission is still open for two more weeks and we would love to receive more contributions for the Young-Researchers-Symposium on Magnetoreception & Navigation in Animals. Travel grants are also available.
www.sfb1372.de/young-resear...
@sfb1372.bsky.social

Meet Melanie: she´s the good soul of the working group and our secret star. Nothing works without her & everything works with her. Our technician can do everything & saves the rest of us from putting our foot in our mouths. She is also into plant conservation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_0W...#isoetes

New paper led by our group´s @wielandheim.bsky.social: more skylarks are migrating during moonlit nights! 🌔

We are happy to announce to have won this year´s volleyball tournament of the institute of biology and environmental sciences. Great team, great fun. And the trophy is a bird (Avocet) - fitting very well to our group 😊

Are you a young ornithologist? Consider registering for the DOG Fledglings Meeting - deadline for registration will be prolonged 🐣 #ornithology

NEW PAPER on tracking Narcissus Flycatcher (Ficedula narcissina) and Amur Stonechat (Saxicola stejnegeri) from Japan with contributions of our working group:
doi.org/10.1007/s103... [Bird pic credit: changed after Ranieljosecastaneda, Wikimedia Commons CC 4.0]

Great teamwork on #Norderney: we colour-ringed & sampled ~130 and tagged 40 Wheatears in just two days to study pre-migratory flights and survival - thanks to excellent preparation by @giovannasandretti.bsky.social #ringing #radiotracking

We are happy to announce that the excellence cluster navisense just got funded - one of the biggest achievements possible in German research funding! We will contribute to the interdisciplinary understanding of bird orientation and navigation from social perspectives, to ecology and physics.

Big congrats to the Navisense excellence cluster www.navisense.org that will be funded by the DFG for the next 7 years! Congrats to all of our SFB members that are involved! @genmig.bsky.social @commonternproject.bsky.social @migecol.bsky.social @cataglyphilosophy.bsky.social @olindecke.bsky.social

YouTube video by NLWKN DER SCHATZ IM SILBERSEE: Wie nährstoffarme Seen wieder zur Heimat bedrohter Arten werden

No bird stuff, but important work for the #conservation of an endangered plant species by our technician Melanie Willen [video in German language only]: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_0W... #isoetes

Spread the word: we're #hiring! We have an open #research fellowship position for #postdocs with their own research idea: It includes an own budget, a #PhD student position and the possibility to conduct independent research on animal #navigation and/or #magnetoreception 🧭🦤🦇🐟⚛️🧪👩‍🔬! sfb1372.de/jobs

Today it is already 2 years ago, that I recieved the honor to call myself "Dr. rer. nat." thanks to @migecol.bsky.social and @ifv-whv.bsky.social for making this possible!