Advith's Calendar

Implementing a Telemetry-Based Method to Quantify Activity Across the Full Annual Cycle of the Wood Thrush

Migratory birds experience dramatically different ecological conditions across their full annual cycle, yet how activity and energetic demands vary among these periods remains poorly understood. Understanding activity can provide insight into behavioral and energetic trade-offs and identify critical periods for conservation. I develop a standardized framework for estimating activity from radio telemetry across receiver systems within the Motus Wildlife Tracking System and validate the method by comparing it with existing telemetry approaches and accelerometry. I then apply this framework to examine activity across the full annual cycle of Wood Thrush (Hylochichla mustelina), a declining Neotropical migrant. Activity was unexpectedly highest during the nonbreeding period, when Wood Thrushes winter in Mexico and Central America, and varied with reproductive context, age, sex, weather, and habitat. These results highlight the importance of understudied periods of the annual cycle and demonstrate how activity can identify critical periods and ecological contexts for migratory bird conservation.