Changing flight and flocking dynamics of homing pigeons (<em>Columba livia d.</em>) over heterogeneous landscapes

Despite the prevalence of study into avian flight behaviour and biomechanics, there has been little research into how birds adapt their flight patterns in response to changes in topography and ground cover. Notably, there remains a gap in our understanding of how terrain cover impacts the energetic cost of flight. We examined several parameters describing the flight and flock behaviours in three cluster flocks of the Homing pigeon (Columba livia d.), including flap frequency as a proxy for energy expenditure. Each flock was flown repeatedly over a heterogeneous landscape of open, wooded, and urban habitats between Slough and Virginia Water, U.K.. Our data demonstrates that the birds adopted significantly slower flight and less dense flocking behaviour when traversing over woodland, whilst flying significantly faster with a lower flap frequency over urban areas. Additionally, the significant trends we observed were associated with temporal interaction effects describing a dissipation of the effects by approximately the tenth flight. We suspect this is demonstrative of the birds becoming increasingly familiar with the short length of their flights, enabling the adoption of lower-efficiency flight patterns. The data we recorded is invaluable for the wider field of flight behaviour study, comprising high-resolution and comprehensive profiles of a large number of birds flying in cluster flocks of different sizes, over multiple flights in a well-mapped area that is representative of much of the United Kingdom's landscape.