Satellite tracking of American Woodcock reveals a gradient of migration strategies

Diversity in behavior is important for migratory birds in adapting to dynamic environmental and habitat conditions and responding to global change. Migratory behavior can be described by a variety of factors that comprise migration strategies. We characterized variation in migration strategies in American Woodcock (Scolopax minor), a migratory gamebird experiencing long-term population decline, using GPS data from approximately 300 individuals tracked throughout eastern North America. We classified woodcock migratory movements using a step-length threshold, and calculated characteristics of migration related to distance, path, and stopping events. We then used principal components analysis (PCA) to ordinate variation in migration characteristics along axes that explained different fundamental aspects of migration, and tested effects of body condition, age-sex class, and starting and ending location on PCA results. The PCA did not show evidence for clustering, suggesting a lack of discre..., This data set contains individual bird information from banding data, in addition to migration metrics calculated from GPS tracking data for American Woodcock during spring and fall migration. Code for running and exploring results of the principal components analysis is also included.
Please visit the Eastern Woodcock Migration Research Cooperative website, woodcockmigration.org for more information about our GPS data collection methods. The raw data are also archived on Movebank (“American Woodcock Migration Ecology in Eastern North America”; Study ID 3515664596).
Data from: Satellite tracking of American Woodcock reveals a gradient of migration strategies
Sarah J. Clements, Liam A. Berigan, Alexander C. Fish, Rachel L. Darling, Amber M. Roth, Greg Balkcom, Bobbi Carpenter, Gary Costanzo, Jeffrey Duguay, Kayleigh Filkins, Clayton L. Graham, William Harvey, Michael Hook, Douglas L. Howell, Seth Maddox, Scott McWilliams, Shawn W. Mayer, Theodore C. Nichols, J. Bruce Pollard, Christian R..., , # Satellite tracking of American Woodcock reveals a gradient of migration strategies

Data and code for principal components analysis investigating migration strategy in American woodcock.

## Description of the data and file structure

The two provided files, \"amwo_migration_metrics_spring_clean.rds\" and \"amwo_migration_metrics_fall_clean.rds\" contain data summarizing individual information and migration metrics for spring and fall migrations, respectively. There is one row for each individual American woodcock. All continuous data, including ordinal dates, are scaled and centered. The columns are as follows:

nstop=number of stopovers

mig_duration=migration duration

depart_time= departure date

arrive_time=arrival date

coast_dist_km= mean distance from coast

mig_dist_km=total migration distance

straight_dist_km=distance from first to last point of migration

sex= sex, f for female, m for male

age=age, Adult or Young

start_lat=starting latitude

start_lon=staring longitude

e...