Replication Data for: Bird’s Decision to Redirect the Migration Path Depends on the Sun and the Moon Position Change (Part 1: American Regional Study)

We take a rigorous directional statistical approach to explore the distributional properties of migrating birds’ travel paths across American continents. We start with an existing dataset containing the migratory path of six different bird species, latitude, longitude, and observation date from a bird-path tracking web resource. Based on that, a second dataset containing the directional change of bird path (in terms of angle) and the corresponding spatiotemporal Position of the Sun is compiled using the specified latitude, longitude, date, and other factor. The available bird path dataset is partitioned into 18 optimal sub-region divisions. We establish that each subdivision’s latitude and longitude distribution separately follows either circular Von Mises distribution or circular uniform distribution. This finding proposes a directional mixture model comprising Von Mises distribution and uniform distribution for general bird path data. Moreover, we seek a rigorous statistical answer on whether a suitable change in the Position of the Sun at a spot on the Earth directly influences the decision of a bird flying on that spot to change its paths, and the statistical result affirms that. A directional statistical regression analysis approach is also selected, and a novel circular-circular regression model is proposed. Goodness-of-fit test results on that circular-circular regression analysis result support the hypothesis about the dependency of change in birds’ migration paths with the corresponding change in the availability of Sun Position. We can also affirm that indirectly, the Milankovitch cycles of the Earth affect bird migration paths because Milankovitch cycles and solar and lunar activity have a deep connection.