ArticleBiology letters2018
Migrating ospreys use thermal uplift over the open sea.
Article in Biology letters, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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14 citing papers in PubMed, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Flight Altitude of Common Cranes (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Crossing the Straits of Mackinac: over-water uplift, wind support and low wind speed facilitates water crossings by a soaring migrant during pre-breeding spring migration.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- Cranes soar on thermal updrafts behind cold fronts as they migrate across the sea.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Soaring over open waters: horizontal winds provide lift to soaring migrants in weak thermal conditions.Movement ecology · 2023Article
- Experience does not change the importance of wind support for migratory route selection by a soaring bird.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Opportunistic soaring by birds suggests new opportunities for atmospheric energy harvesting by flying robots.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Review
- Ecological inference using data from accelerometers needs careful protocols.Methods in ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- The interplay of wind and uplift facilitates over-water flight in facultative soaring birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Barrier crossings and winds shape daily travel schedules and speeds of a flight generalist.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Overland and oversea migration of white storks through the water barriers of the straits of Gibraltar.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Physical limits of flight performance in the heaviest soaring bird.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Dynamics of the energy seascape can explain intra-specific variations in sea-crossing behaviour of soaring birds.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Habitat availability influences migration speed, refueling patterns and seasonal flyways of a fly-and-forage migrant.Movement ecology · 2020Article
- Seasonal variation in trans-oceanic flight and island use in a migratory falcon.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Most large raptors on migration avoid crossing the sea because of the lack of atmospheric convection over temperate seas. The osprey Pandion haliaetus is an exception among raptors, since it can fly over several hundred kilometres of open water. We equipped five juvenile ospreys with GPS-Accelerometer-Magnetometer loggers. All birds were able to find and use thermal uplift while crossing the Mediterranean Sea, on average 7.5 times per 100 km, and could reach altitudes of 900 m above the sea surface. Their climb rate was 1.6 times slower than over land, and birds kept flapping most of the time while circling in the thermals, indicating that convections cells were weaker than over land. The frequency of thermal soaring was correlated with the difference between the sea surface and air temperature, indicating that atmospheric convection occurred when surface waters were warmer than the overlaying air. These observations help explain the transoceanic cosmopolitan distribution of osprey, and question the widely held assumption that water bodies represent strict barriers for large raptors.
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