Navigation Galliformes 5 families 290 species Helmeted Guineafowl

Megapodiidae, 21 species -- Australasia Brush Turkey. Incubates eggs in huge mounds of rotting vegetation. Megapodiidae, 21 species -- Australasia

Malleefowl, South Australia Endangered Malleefowl, South Australia

Malleefowl mound

Malleefowl eggs in situ.

Malleefowl egg. Chicken sized birds lays 180 g egg, chicken eggs ca Malleefowl egg. Chicken sized birds lays 180 g egg, chicken eggs ca. 50 g.

Cracidae, Curassows, Guans, Chachalacas, 50 species

So. Texas south. Plain Chachalaca

Phasianidae Pheasants, partridges, grouse, turkeys, Old World Quail, and guineafowl 177 species (64%)

Ring-necked Pheasant, an introduced game bird species.

Greater Prairie Chicken

Currently there less than 100 Attwater’s Prairie Chickens left in the wild. They inhabit two separate grassy patches in Texas totaling 12,400 acres (5,018 hectares), the remnants of six million acres (2,428,114 hectares) of coastal prairie that supported as many as a million Attwater’s a century ago. The grouse were over hunted early and hit by habitat loss every year since.

Willow Ptarmigan in Alaska molting into white winter plumage in early September.

Numididae African species. Vulturine Guineafowl

Odontophoridae – New World Quail, 30 species

Navigation

3 Ways to Navigate

Pilotage visual reference to landmarks

Distance-and-bearing AKA dead reckoning

Distance-and-Bearing Gwinner’s European Warblers

Bicoordinate navigation

Bicoordinate Navigation 1. Where you are 2. Where you want to be 3. Direction from 1 to 2 Need a map and a compass

Displacement studies Early proof Wales to Boston 42 manx shearwaters taken from Wales to Boston, 3200 miles away, and released. 38 returned to burrow within 12 days traveling at an average of 266 miles/day! Wales to Boston

White-crowned Sparrow Baton Rouge 26 of 411 returned Laurel, MD 15 of 660 returned

Female traveled 6379 km in 8.15 days

Navigation ability improves with age in Starlings

Perdeck’s Starlings (Box 13-2 Gill) Displaced from Holland to Switzerland Adults exhibited bicoordinate nav Immatures only general direction Wintering grounds in southern England, Belgium & northern France Immatures Adults

Map and compass

Sun Compass Gustav Kramer 1950

Sun compass Requires a clock

Displacement Studies

Birds possess a time-compensated Sun compass

Star compass Franz & Eleanore Sauer 1955 Garden Warbler

Star Compass Emlen’s Indigo Buntings

Time-compensated star compass?

Birds orientates to a specific star Hypothesis 1 Birds orientates to a specific star

Hypothesis 2 Birds orientate with reference to a fixed geometric pattern independent of time of night

Magnetic compass

Time their return to home loft How do they find their way Time their return to home loft How do they find their way? Can a blind pigeon home?

Magnetic Compass

Herring Gull chicks

Other compasses?

Cardiac Conditioning

Cardiac Conditioning shows birds can detect Polarized & ultraviolet Light Atmospheric pressure changes as small as 10 mm water = 10 m Δ altitude Infrasound 0.06 Hz (man 20-20K Hz)

Ornithologists have found birds can set their compass to the sun, moon, or stars. They are also guided by the Earth's magnetic field. Some even home in on their destination using a finely tuned sense of smell. Such skills are thought to be innate—part of their genetic makeup. Increasingly, there is evidence that these navigational aids are replaced in older birds by more complex systems. These depend on seasoned migrants being able to learn from experience. New research, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests birds do this by improving their long-term memory to map migration routes. The study was carried out by Claudia Mettke-Hofmann and Eberhard Gwinner at the Max Planck Research Centre for Ornithology in Andechs, Germany. They found that migratory garden warblers (Sylvia borin) are able to memorize and remember a particular feeding site for at least a year. Its close relative, the Sardinian warbler (Sylvia melanocephala momus), which is nonmigratory, wasn't able to retain this information for more than two weeks.