Bird migration patterns are shifting. What does this tell us about our world? – illustrated

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}Bird migrations are one of nature’s most incredible displays. With the help of GPS tracking, scientists are discovering remarkable details about these ancient and mysterious journeys, as well as new dangers that are changing them.

Desertas petrels are storm-chasing seabirds that follow hurricanes, which bring deep-sea creatures to the surface. Only around 200 breeding pairs remain, though the population is stable. These birds are no larger than pigeons and all nest on a single uninhabited island off the west coast of North Africa, spreading out across the Atlantic Ocean to find food.

One of the 35 birds tracked by GPS is “Marlo,” born on Bugio Island and tagged after returning there in 2019. Since males and females look almost identical, researchers aren’t sure of Marlo’s sex, but we’ll refer to him as “he.”

A map shows Marlo’s 2019 migration path, zigzagging across the central Atlantic between Europe, North Africa, and North America, then heading down toward the northern coast of South America. A video captures a Desertas petrel with a wide wingspan skimming just above the waves.

Marlo is part of a lifelong pair. When he and his partner reunite after months apart, they greet each other excitedly with preening and calls. Together, they raise a single chick, taking turns flying out to sea for shifts lasting up to three weeks and covering distances of as much as 7,400 miles (12,000 km). They feed on seafood and convert it into oil, which they regurgitate for their chick.

Francesco Ventura of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts explains, “The routes they take are among the longest recorded for any animal during breeding season. It’s like traveling…”After raising his chick, Marlo left Bugio on November 2, 2019, and didn’t land again until the following June. Like all Desertas petrels, he spends most of his life soaring over international waters.

Young petrels typically spend their first few years at sea without ever touching land, and their exact whereabouts during this time remain a mystery. If they survive these early years, they can live for decades.

In September 2019, Marlo encountered a developing cyclone over the Atlantic Ocean that later became Tropical Storm Gabrielle. Researchers studying their migrations have found that petrels deliberately fly into storms, possibly using cues like air pressure, cloud formations, and wave patterns to locate them.

“This seems intentional to me,” says Ventura, who was among the first researchers to document this behavior in Desertas petrels.

For 19 days, Marlo followed the tropical storm, traveling nearly 7,000 miles and reaching speeds of 41 mph. Hurricanes stir up cold, nutrient-rich water, bringing deep-sea squid and crustaceans to the surface where birds can feed on them.

Climate change threatens the prey these seabirds rely on, as marine life is highly sensitive to temperature shifts. Some species are moving north or into deeper waters as the ocean warms.

Marlo covers vast distances to increase his chances of finding food, hunting at night and using his sense of smell to locate prey in the dark. “They don’t flap,” Ventura explains. “They surf the wind.”

Meanwhile, the nightingale, weighing no more than a large strawberry, makes a 6,000-mile round trip each year, crossing the Sahara twice between its breeding grounds in England and its winter home in West Africa.

But this journey is becoming more dangerous, and their destination less hospitable.

“Berkeley,” a one-year-old nightingale, was tagged near Alton Water, a nature reserve south of Ipswich in the UK, on May 31, 2023. He was caught in a dense thicket and fitted with a GPS tag as light as a paperclip.

Throughout the summer, Berkeley worked hard to gather beetles, ants, flies, and caterpillars to feed his young. Once his chicks had left the nest, he prepared to migrate south.

In late August, Berkeley chose a perfect night—mild, clear, and calm—to begin his journey. He crossed the English Channel, flew along the west coast of France to Spain, and spent three weeks there resting and building up fat reserves before facing the Atlantic and the Sahara.

Some nightingales complete this crossing in just a couple of days, while others stop during the day, resting at desert oases if they find any.

However, droughts and wildfires in southern Europe, driven by the climate crisis, mean more birds are dying over the Sahara, forced to continue their migration without being in optimal condition.

Bad weather can also lead them astray, and they face predation from giant noctule bats over the mountains of the Iberian Peninsula. Berkeley flew high over the desert at around 5,000 meters to stay cool and managed to avoid these dangers.

On September 26, five weeks after leaving Alton Water, he arrived in Senegal. Before migration, these birds should have a plump body and rounded chest, but by the end, they are often much thinner.”It’s an emaciated thing,” says Chris Hewson, who monitors these birds for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).

After a strenuous journey, most nightingales spend the winter in Senegal, the Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. However, since the 1960s, this region has faced growing threats from severe droughts, reduced rainfall, and a rising human population that collects firewood and grazes livestock. These factors have caused lasting damage and diminished the quality of their habitat.

A map illustrates that British nightingales are concentrated in a small part of Senegal and the Gambia, whereas those from France and Italy spread out across more favorable inland areas in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

In Britain, the nightingales’ habitat has also deteriorated significantly, with more deer and less scrub and woodland. Over the last 50 years, Britain’s nightingale population has dropped by 91%, and the loss of suitable habitats at both ends of their migration route is a key reason for this decline.

Using more accurate GPS tags to pinpoint the birds’ locations will allow ecologists to concentrate conservation efforts on the most critical areas.

Bewick’s swans are among the heaviest birds that migrate long distances. Their journey of nearly 2,200 miles requires so much energy that they must stop to refuel every few hundred miles.

Originally, they relied on aquatic plants, but since the 1960s, as farming intensified in northwestern Europe, they have shifted to eating grass and crops and can now feed throughout the region.

“Mary” was captured and tagged on December 20, 2016, in North Brabant province in the Netherlands. She was at least four years old and was raising a cygnet.

A map shows Mary’s route from the Russian tundra to Europe.

By the following spring, she had begun a long journey north, reaching breeding grounds in the remote, windy Malozemelskaya tundra in northern Russia, an area filled with bogs and wetlands. In September, she started her autumn migration south, flying to western Latvia and then to Lower Saxony in northern Germany for the winter.

As Europe’s climate warms, Bewick’s swans are taking much shorter trips to ice-free wetlands and farmlands in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Poland—a behavior known as short-stopping. Britain has seen an estimated 43% decline in its Bewick’s swan population over five years.

A video shows swans in flight.

About 60 swans are fitted with GPS collars. Tracking data reveals that they adjust their autumn routes daily. On colder days, they cover longer distances, but when it’s warm, they may not move at all.

Hans Linssen, a doctoral student at the University of Amsterdam, has modeled data from these birds over several years and found that if winter temperatures were 1°C (1.8°F) colder, the swans would winter about 75 miles farther southwest on average.

Short-stopping helps the birds adapt their wintering habits to a changing climate. While it means fewer swans in the Netherlands and the UK, which were once their main winter homes, this flexibility is likely beneficial for the swans.

“If they winter closer to their breeding grounds, the distance they need to travel in spring is shorter, allowing them to migrate faster,” Linssen explains.

A map compares the wintering locations of Bewick’s swans in different years with the average temperatures at those times. For instance, in 2016, when temperatures were 3.02°C, the swans went further into the Netherlands, but in 2019, with temperatures at 5.53°C, they stayed around Poland and Lithuania.

Linssen notes that while the Bewick’s swan population is declining rapidly, illegal hunting may be a bigger factor than climate change. In the UK, up to a third of these swans have lead pellets from shotgun shells or fishing weights in their bodies.

Other possible pressures include competition with species like whooper and mute swans for resources.During migration stopovers, and in the Arctic, predators like red foxes are moving farther north, leading to increased predation on eggs and hatchlings.

Illustrations by Tina Zellmer, graphics by Heidi Wilson and Harvey Symons.

Find more Age of Extinction coverage here, supported by Guardian.org.

Methodology

Global temperature data is from CHELSA’s daily mean air temperatures, based on hourly ERA5 data from 1981 to 2010. Global vegetation data comes from NASA’s Terra/Modis monthly vegetation index (NDVI 2024). World map borders, relief, and land-use colors are from Natural Earth.

For flight paths in the Americas, we used the migrations of 30 out of 118 species tracked in this study. European flight paths came from a 2016 GPS tracking dataset in northern and eastern Europe.

Desertas petrel migratory paths were part of this study, and the detailed hurricane-hunting flight path was plotted using data from Francesco Ventura and colleagues. Wind and speed direction data came from the Copernicus ERA5 dataset, and the hurricane track is from NOAA. Audio was recorded by Ben Metzger.

The nightingale’s journey was based on GPS tracking of two birds in 2023. Tracks and suitability map data were provided by the BTO’s Chris Hewson and Máire Kirkland from their study on migratory connectivity. Audio was recorded by Grzegorz Michalski.

Bewick’s swans’ migratory paths were provided by Hans Linssen and used in a study on how migratory swans adapt to a warming climate. Audio was recorded by David Darrell-Lambert.

Thanks to Joanne Morten from BirdLife International for guidance on seabird migration data and paths, and to Jon Carter from the BTO for sourcing information at the start of the project.

Bird facts about the nightingale and Bewick’s swans came from the RSPB; information about the Desertas petrel was from the Madeira birds website.

Citations

– Karger, D.N., et al. (2017). Climatologies at high resolution for the Earth land surface areas.
– La Sorte, F.A., et al. (2016). Convergence of broad-scale migration strategies in terrestrial birds.
– Adojaan, K., et al. GPS tracking of Storks, Cranes and birds of prey, breeding in Northern and Eastern Europe. Data accessed via GBIF.org.
– Ventura, F., et al. (2024). Oceanic seabirds chase tropical cyclones.
– Kirkland, M., et al. (2025). Extreme migratory connectivity and apparent mirroring of non-breeding grounds conditions in a severely declining breeding population of an afro-palearctic migratory bird.
– Linssen, H., et al. (2023). Migratory swans individually adjust their autumn migration and winter range to a warming climate.

Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of helpful and illustrated FAQs about shifting bird migration patterns and what they tell us about our world

FAQs Shifting Bird Migration What It Tells Us

BeginnerLevel Questions

1 What does shifting migration patterns actually mean
It means birds are changing their travel schedules and routes They might be arriving at their breeding grounds earlier in the spring leaving later in the fall or even spending the winter in new more northern areas than they used to

2 Why are birds changing their migration habits
The primary reason is climate change As global temperatures rise the availability of food and hospitable weather conditions are shifting forcing birds to follow these changes to survive

3 Is this shift a bad thing
Its a major warning sign While it shows birds are adaptable the rapid pace of the shift is causing problems Many species cant adapt fast enough leading to population declines

4 Can you give me a simple example
Sure The American Robin is now staying much farther north during the winter than it did a few decades ago Instead of being a sure sign of spring you can now often see them yearround in northern states because winters are milder

5 How do scientists even track this
They use a combination of oldschool methods like bird banding and modern technology like satellite tags weather radar and millions of observations from citizen scientists on apps like eBird

Advanced ImpactFocused Questions

6 Whats the biggest ecological problem caused by this shift
A major issue is phenological mismatch This is a fancy term for when a birds arrival at its breeding ground doesnt match the peak availability of its food source If the caterpillars hatch and are gone before the chicks are born the chicks starve

7 Are all birds affected equally
No not at all Birds with shorter migration routes or more flexible diets are adapting better

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