A boreal songbird’s 20,000 km migration across North America and the Atlantic Ocean

(a, b) Southward and (c) northward migration of Blackpoll Warblers from four breeding sites in Nome, Alaska, USA; Denali, Alaska; Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada; and Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. (a) Great circle routes between breeding sites, estimated departure locations from the stopover region along the Atlantic Coast of the USA (dark orange), and the estimated overwintering grounds in South America. (b) Estimated longitudes of departure from the coast of North America and arrival along the coast of Venezuela. We highlighted the western Greater Antilles (light orange) to acknowledge the possibility that some Blackpolls could have moved directly south from the Atlantic coast (dark orange) to the western Greater Antilles without changing longitude before later departing for South America. (c) Northward migration routes for 14 individuals, with points in North America showing areas (mean 95% quantiles of latitude and longitude estimates) where individuals stopped over for 4 days or longer.

Authors: WILLIAM V. DELUCA ,1,11 BRADLEY K. WOODWORTH,2,3 STUART A. MACKENZIE,4 AMY E. M. NEWMAN,2 HILARY A. COOKE,5 LAURA M. PHILLIPS,6 NIKOLE E. FREEMAN,2 ALEX O. SUTTON,2 LILA TAUZER,5 CAROL MCINTYRE,7 IAIN J. STENHOUSE,8 SCOTT WEIDENSAUL,9 PHILIP D. TAYLOR,10 AND D. RYAN NORRIS2

Year: 2019

Publication: Ecology

Publication Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2651

Access: Subscription

Affiliations: 1 Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003 USA.
2 Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1 Canada.
3 School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane St. Lucia, Queensland 4072 Australia.
4 Bird Studies Canada, Port Rowan, Ontario NOE 1M0 Canada.
5 Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, 169 Titanium Way, Whitehorse, Yukon Y1A 0E9 Canada.
6 Denali National Park and Preserve, PO Box 9, Denali Park, Alaska 99755 USA.
7 National Park Service, 4175 Geist Road, Fairbanks, Alaska 99709 USA.
8 Biodiversity Research Institute, 276 Canco Road, Portland, Maine 04103 USA.
9 778 Schwartz Valley Road, Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania 17972 USA.
10 Department of Biology, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia B4P 2R6 Canada.

Corresponding Author: wdeluca@eco.umass.edu

Funding: Kenneth M. Molson Foundation, Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, The Department of the Interior Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, U.S.National Park Service, Society of Yukon Bird Observatories, Bird Studies Canada, The W. Garfield Weston Foundation, Teslin Tlingit Council, the estate of Fred Bodsworth, Bering Straits Council,Solomon Native Corporations, Churchill Northern Science Centre, CNSC Northern Research Fund, Denali Education Center, Alaska Geographic, and Camp Denali.

Keywords: annual cycle; Blackpoll Warbler; cross-continent; geolocator; migratory network; phenology; Setophaga striata; stopover; transoceanic; wind.

Abstract: None

Supplementary Material: Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.
1002/ecy.2651/suppinfo

Intrusive Methodologies: Geolocators

Citizen Science: Unknown

Conservation: “Our work begins to fill an important gap in the development of a range-wide migratory network for this species. Such networks are critical for
not only identifying the location of major stopover and overwintering sites but also for determining the degree to which breeding populations mix during subsequent periods of the annual cycle. Connectivity information is key to linking habitat loss at breeding, overwintering and stopover sites to regional population fluctuations. For Blackpolls, our results suggest that loss or degradation of stopover habitat along the Atlantic coast of the United States, northern
Venezuela, and the Great Lakes basin could result in disproportionately wide-ranging effects on Blackpoll abundance since they are used by individuals from
across the breeding range.”

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