Data from: Overwintering strategies of migratory birds: a novel approach for estimating seasonal movement patterns of residents and transients

1. Our understanding of movement patterns in wildlife populations has
played an important role in current ecological knowledge, and can inform
landscape conservation decisions. Direct measures of movement can be
obtained using marked individuals, but this requires tracking individuals
across a landscape or multiple sites. 2. We demonstrate how movements can
be estimated indirectly using single-site, capture–mark–recapture (CMR)
data with a multistate open robust design with state uncertainty model
(MSORD-SU). We treat residence and transience as two phenotypic states of
overwintering migrants, and use time- and state-dependent probabilities of
site entry and persistence as indirect measures of movement. We applied
the MSORD-SU to data on eight species of overwintering Neotropical birds
collected in 14 countries between 2002 and 2011. In addition to entry and
persistence probabilities, we estimated proportions of residents at a
study site, and mean residence times. 3. We identified overwintering
movement patterns and residence times that contrasted with prior
categorizations of territoriality. Most species showed evidence of
residents entering sites at multiple time intervals, with transients
tending to enter between peak resident movement times. Persistence and the
proportion of residents varied by latitude, but were not always positively
correlated for a given species. 4. Synthesis and applications: Our results
suggest that migratory songbirds commonly move among habitats during the
overwintering period. Substantial proportions of populations appear to be
comprised of transient individuals, and residents tend to persist at
specific sites for relatively short periods of time. This information on
persistence and movement patterns should be explored for specific habitats
to guide landscape management on the wintering grounds, such as
determining which habitats are conserved or restored as part of
certification programs of tropical agroforestry crops. We suggest that
research and conservation efforts on Neotropical migrant songbirds focus
on identifying landscape configurations and regional habitat networks that
support these diverse overwintering strategies to secure full life cycle
conservation.