It would make sense for waterfowl to use waterways as navigational aids while they migrate south for the winter. And biologists thought that North American ducks used rivers as leading lines for migration. Scientists in the mid-20th century even reported seeing ducks do so.
But as is often the case in science, what we think should be true does not always turn out to be so: Researchers tracking ducks in Illinois found that the birds completely ignored a river that should be useful for their navigation. Benjamin J. O’Neal of the University of Illinois in Champaign and colleagues report their findings August 20 in Ibis.
The problem with relying on the earlier scientists’ findings is that ducks are nocturnal. That makes tracking their migration a bit more difficult than simply looking up into the sky. So O’Neal and colleagues used weather surveillance radar from 1995 to 2009 to detect the direction of departure of ducks leaving a major stopover point along the Illinois River during the fall.
But as is often the case in science, what we think should be true does not always turn out to be so: Researchers tracking ducks in Illinois found that the birds completely ignored a river that should be useful for their navigation. Benjamin J. O’Neal of the University of Illinois in Champaign and colleagues report their findings August 20 in Ibis.
The problem with relying on the earlier scientists’ findings is that ducks are nocturnal. That makes tracking their migration a bit more difficult than simply looking up into the sky. So O’Neal and colleagues used weather surveillance radar from 1995 to 2009 to detect the direction of departure of ducks leaving a major stopover point along the Illinois River during the fall.
