Date of Award
5-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School
College of Science and Mathematics
Department/Program
Earth and Environmental Studies
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Scott L. Kight
Committee Member
Lisa C. Hazard
Committee Member
Matthew S. Schuler
Committee Member
David S. Mizrahi
Abstract
Many species of North American passerines migrate along the Atlantic flyway in the fall to reach winter habitats in the southeastern United States, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. Birds face many perils along their journeys including window strikes, which kill over one billion birds per year in the United States alone. Some birds survive the impact and may continue their migration. These birds may suffer delayed mortality or show aberrant migration due to injuries. This research seeks to understand if window-struck birds that initially survive bird-building collisions survive into the future and, if so, if they migrate effectively. Nanotags were affixed to window-struck passerines and control birds to track their fall migrations with the Motus Wildlife Tracking System. Control and experimental birds migrated with similar success across all species, indicating that birds survived post-collision events at the same rate as wild birds and that no significant long-term injury to these birds had occurred. These results provide evidence that birds involved in building collisions that survive are often successful in the wild and should not be added to overall mortality estimates. As an extension to this research on potentially aberrant migration in birds, three species of passerines were studied for differences in survival and migration between captive-raised and wild individuals. Nanotags were used to track birds raised in a rehabilitation facility and wild birds with the Motus network. Relatively few birds were successfully tracked, likely due to high hatch-year mortality during migration. However, there were significant differences between captive-raised and wild birds in one species, with significantly more wild birds successfully tracked during their fall migrations. These results provide evidence for challenges in captive-rearing passerines similar to those of captive-rearing other birds.
File Format
Recommended Citation
O'Connor, Cailin, "Tracking Fall Migration with the Motus Wildlife Tracking System: The Fate of Window-struck and Captive-raised Passerines" (2025). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1573.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1573