Migratory birds from Drenthe have a better chance of survival if they leave for Sweden. This is evident from research by the University of Groningen (RUG).
According to the research, spring is arriving earlier and earlier due to climate change. The result is that migratory birds flying from Africa often arrive too late in the Netherlands, where the food supply has already been considerably reduced by that time. Koosje Lamers and Christiaan Both from the RUG have therefore released Drenthe pied flycatchers in southern Sweden, where spring arrives about two weeks later. And their project is successful.
“We started the experiment in the spring of 2017,” says Lamers, who is a PhD student at the Conservation Ecology research institute at the RUG. “We then moved the first pied flycatchers from the Dwingelderveld and the Drents-Friese Wold to the south of Sweden.”
And it turned out: the Drenthe birds arrived in southern Sweden two weeks earlier in the spring than the Swedish ones and raised more than twice as many young. “This experiment shows that the bird’s instinct is not tied to location, but is genetically determined.” Moreover, the Drenthe Pied Flycatchers born in Sweden started the breeding season about ten days earlier than the Swedish birds.
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