![]() ![]() Building connectivity routes on land is not a new idea. Migrating birds, in short, need not only conserved land to rest, but also aerial highways for their long flights. ![]() ![]() I think making it more of a formal concept, more equivalent to how we look at the landscape and the oceans, would be integrative.” We need to pay attention to what flying animals need in order migrate. “This is not really a concept that has been taken up, but it is starting to. “Aerial habitat needs to be considered along with terrestrial habitat,” Korpach says. The metabolic cost these diversions have is not yet known, but the stress is presumed to be unwelcomed. ![]() As the researchers report in the journal Ecography, the birds prefer dark skies and follow meandering paths to stay in this habitat. The GPS sensor attached to the bird’s back let the team see how the birds diverted course away from light pollution.īy attaching pinkie-tip sized GPS sensors to the birds they saw how individuals diverted course away from light pollution. But the UM team wanted to see what effect light has on a nocturnal species such as the whip-poor-will, a brown bird slightly smaller than a robin that looks like a chunk of tree bark. Most birds, even if they are diurnal by nature, migrate at night, and it has been well documented that artificial light from cities attract many of them. PhD candidate Alicia Korpach led the study that looked at how the nocturnal eastern whip-poor-will, ( Antrostomus vociferus) interacts with light pollution while making its 4,000-kilometer migration from Manitoba and Eastern Canada to Central America. By equipping some migratory birds with a GPS backpack, the biologists provided new and crucial data to a burgeoning idea that argues airspace is a habitat and we need to conserve it, an idea that is gaining support in municipal governments across Canada, including most recently in Winnipeg. University of Manitoba researchers have published a paper that challenges the way we think about airspace. ![]()
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