Morrison Pot

How juvenile songbirds manage to find their way across complex environments to population-specific wintering areas never visited before, often without guidance from parents and other experienced conspecifics, continues to appeal to the imagination. Whether migratory orientation and the selection of destinations results from a genetic migratory program or is learned through interactions with the environment is poorly understood, while this is important for our understanding of species’ ability to rapidly adjust their migratory routines to global environmental changes. We will use the common starling as a model system for migratory songbirds and equip these birds with tracking devices to learn whether their migratory behaviour involves learning or not by experimentally displacing autumn migrating starlings to unfamiliar areas.