Seyer Y, Gauthier G, Bêty J, Therrien JF, Lecomte N

Seasonal variations in migration strategy of a long-distance arctic-breeding seabird

Migratory behavior in seabirds can be affected by factors like breeding, molting, seasonality, and resource availability. Using geolocators, Seyer and co-workers revealed for the first time the complete, annual, long-distance migratory movements of long-tailed jaegers breeding in the Canadian Arctic. Jaegers traveled on average >32,000 km per year, wintering across a wide region of the southern Atlantic. Contrary to most other bird species, jaegers’ prebreeding migration was 40% longer and 32% slower than postbreeding migration. While jaegers used a postbreeding time-minimizing strategy to rapidly reach the wintering sites, most likely to molt, they adopted a fly-and-forage strategy during prebreeding migration, slowing it down and increasing foraging effort, probably to accumulate body reserves in anticipation of unfavorable conditions on arrival at breeding sites.

Abstract   Back to contents page   Link to full PDF