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1 July 2011 Veery (Catharus fuscescens) Wintering Locations, Migratory Connectivity, and a Revision of Its Winter Range using Geolocator Technology
Christopher M. Heckscher, Syrena M. Taylor, James W. Fox, Vsevolod Afanasyev
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Abstract

We used light-level archival geolocators to track five Veeries (Catharus fuscescens) for one annual cycle as they migrated from Delaware to South America and back. Southward migration commenced in late August and September 2009. Veeries arrived at wintering sites from 2 November to 2 December 2009. All birds initially wintered in the Amazon basin south of the Amazon River in Mato Grosso, Para, and Amazonas states, Brazil. All birds showed intratropical migration to a second winter site between 7 January and 7 March 2010. These second winter sites were in the interior, northern, and southern periphery of the Amazon basin and the Orinoco River headwaters, Venezuela. Northward migration commenced in mid-April 2010, and the Veeries returned to Delaware between 29 April and 20 May 2010. Despite variation in migratory patterns, several stopover regions were visited by multiple individuals: the coasts of the Carolinas, the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba and Jamaica, the north coast of Colombia and Venezuela, and southern Venezuela. Our spatial and temporal data necessitates that the Veery winter range include the entire Amazon basin and the headwaters of the Orinoco River, as well as two disjunct regions in Mérida state, Venezuela, and São Paulo state, Brazil. We hypothesize that Veeries initially settled in lowland forest and that intratropical migration was prompted by the ecological factors associated with the seasonal flood pulse of Amazonian rivers. If so, the Veery may be threatened by the recent, unprecedented proposed alteration of Amazonian lowland forests.

© 2011 by The American Ornithologists' Union. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp.
Christopher M. Heckscher, Syrena M. Taylor, James W. Fox, and Vsevolod Afanasyev "Veery (Catharus fuscescens) Wintering Locations, Migratory Connectivity, and a Revision of Its Winter Range using Geolocator Technology," The Auk 128(3), 531-542, (1 July 2011). https://doi.org/10.1525/auk.2011.10280
Received: 10 December 2010; Accepted: 2 May 2011; Published: 1 July 2011
KEYWORDS
Catharus fuscescens
geolocator
migratory connectivity
Nearctic—Neotropical migrant
South America
Veery
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