Ardea
Official journal of the Netherlands Ornithologists' Union

login


[close window] [previous abstract] [next abstract]

Perdeck A.C. (1974) An experiment on the orientation of juvenile Starlings during spring migration. ARDEA 62 (3-4): 190-195
About 3,000 juvenile (second calendar year) Starlings were caught during spring migration (end of February, March) in The Netherlands and displaced to Switzerland. Recoveries in the breeding season were located both in the normal breeding area of the population and quite near the point of release. It is concluded that these juveniles have the faculty to find back the area of hatching by means of goal orientation and that this faculty is used by Starlings when returning to the area of hatching for the first time (Fig. 1). The earlier suggestion (Perdeck 1967) that in this case they use one-direction orientation is now dismissed. The recoveries near the release point (up till four years after displace-land and migrated in autumn to France (Fig. 2). The recoveries in northern France could be explained by migration with goal orientation towards the first-winter area.


[close window] [previous abstract] [next abstract]