The Cuckoo is one of the migrants we know least about once it leaves the UK. This amazing site is tracking the movements of five Cuckoos from breeding grounds in East Anglia to their winter quarters in Africa.
http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking
I have always been fascinated and touched by the devotion of Emperor Penguins and their rearing of a single chick in possibly the remotest and severest of environments on the planet. They breed in the depth of the Antarctic winter during 24 hours of darkness in temperatures which range from –20 C to – 50C…
The Cuckoo is one of the migrants we know least about once it leaves the UK, however the BTO track, on their amazing site, the movements of five Cuckoos from breeding grounds in East Anglia to their winter quarters in Africa. http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking Cuckoo tracking what we’ve learnt so far: http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking/what-have-we-learnt Latest Cuckoo tracking news: http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking/european-cuckoo-study…
I was at a lecture on animal navigation at the Royal Society this week. Nothing world changing, but possibly some useful bits of background regarding navigation. This deals with the mammal brain, but given the similarities in behaviour between mammals and birds one can assume the birds might achieve some similar process. The important brain…
A recent paper called “Modelling collective navigation via non-local communication”has been published by S. T. Johnston(1) and K. J. Painter(2). They tell us that a group of individuals produce better navigational results thanindividuals which is why flocks of birds are more efficient than a solo migrant. TheRAF confirms this where they have found that a…
There is a lot of work going on in the navigation field. All the researchers in this field are now clear that navigation takes place in the sub-conscious. I made the mistake of thinking that native peoples who seemed to navigate perfectly without any aids could tell me how they did it, but language is…
Intro I have put together this article to spell out some of the thinking that I have come across recently. A lot is highly contentious (such as Torsion waves) but as we struggle to understand how animals (and humans) navigate effortlessly, ideas which seemed so strong suddenly seem to be beset by impossible conditions. We…