By bond ultralight trailing devices to pied flycatchers ( Ficedula hypoleuca ) , researchers have fall upon that these small songbirds can vanish 40 to 60 hours across the Sahara desert without bar . The finding , issue inBiology Lettersthis month , take exception the mind that these foresightful - aloofness migrant residuum during the day when it ’s the hot . Rather , it seems flying nonstop saves both time and energy .
Every year , over 2 billion songbirds cross the Sahara – the world ’s largest desert – between their temperate breeding grounds and their African wintering grounds . How they accomplish this daunting task is still mostly a mystery since their small size and large phone number make them unmanageable to track . Pied flycatchers , for instance , count just 12 Gram ( 0.03 lbs ) . late studies suggest that nocturnally migrate species make their trek intermittently , even though this scheme might take longer .
To investigate , a team led byJanne Ouwehandfrom the University of Groningen attach geolocator lumberman to 52 male person and 28 female pied flycatchers using peg - iteration harnesses in 2013 . These dare nocturnal , longsighted - space migrants come from a population in Drenthe in the Netherlands , and they ’re known to winter in the westerly Ivory Coast and eastern Guinea in sub - Saharan Africa . The faller record light point , temperature , and longitude information .
The squad managed to retake 27 of the hoot in 2014 and 2015 . They discovered that most of the tracked tyrant flycatcher made flights in the daytime during the fall and spring . In the spring , the birds embarked on a nonstop flight directly from their wintering grounds , 500 kilometers ( 310 miles ) to the south of the desert . In the fall , the birds probably avoided part of the desert by fly over the ocean instead .
The flycatchers ’ maximum flight duration ranged from 40 to 60 hours , and with an average ground focal ratio of 15.3 meters ( 50 metrical foot ) per moment , the petty birds could cover as much as 3,350 kilometre ( 2,080 sea mile ) .
Image in the text : J. Ouwehand & C. Both , Biol . Lett . 2016
