Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research

Tracking spoonbills

Spoonbills that breed in The Netherlands spend the winter along the Atlantic coast between France and Senegal. But why do some spoonbills fly only a few hundred kilometres to spend the winter in France, whereas others continue their journey for more than 4,000 kilometres to go to Senegal? To investigate the importance of social information and habitat quality in shaping the migration routes of young spoonbills, we have equipped juvenile spoonbills with a GPS-GSM transmitter in The Netherlands and in France.