BACKPACK-wearing songbirds have revealed the pace of their migration for the first time, which may have key implications for their conservation.
Bridget Stutchbury at York University in Toronto, Canada, and colleagues fitted 14 wood thrushes and 20 purple martins from the same breeding populations with devices to record the time of sunrise and sunset each day. When the birds returned to Canada from their winter migration to Central and South America, the team used the data to calculate their daily latitude and longitude. “This is the first time anyone has been able to map songbird migration routes to…
