Sabine’s gulls tracked from Nasaruvaalik Island, NU, offer researchers new insight into how highly migratory species use habitat between their breeding and wintering areas. You can read the whole paper, recently published in Animal Migration here.
Sabine’s gulls fly more than 15,000 km each way between their High Arctic breeding site and only two geographically restricted wintering areas - one off the coast of Peru, the other of the coast of South Africa. While these birds spend most of the year out at sea, how they move across what to us may look like a homogenous, featureless landscape is actually informed by a keen understanding of where to find areas of high marine productivity. Even while individual birds wander widely, all seem to know where reliable places to forage along their migratory routes are and congregate there at certain times of the year.