Altitudinal Migration
Yellow-eyed Juncos sometimes make a migration of sorts — not from north to south, but from the high mountains to the lowlands or the other way around. It’s called altitudinal migration. In the warm summer months, some Yellow-eyed Juncos prefer to nest at higher elevations, while in winter, the scarcity of food pushes them back down to the valleys.
BirdNote®
Altitudinal Migration
Written by Ariana Remmel
This is BirdNote.
[Yellow-eyed Junco song https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/163157971]
Yellow-eyed Juncos can be found shuffling through leaf litter in the southeast corner of Arizona and central Mexico, searching for tasty seeds from pines and oaks. And although these fire-eyed birds stay within the same general area year round, they sometimes make a migration of sorts — not from north to south, but from the high mountains to the lowlands or the other way around. It’s called altitudinal migration.
[Yellow-eyed Junco song https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/163157971]
In the warm summer months, some Yellow-eyed Juncos prefer to nest at higher elevations where their nests on the ground are less vulnerable to predators. But as winter approaches, the scarcity of food in the snowy peaks often pushes the juncos back down to the desert floor. This altitudinal migration is common for many bird species that live along mountain slopes.
[American Dipper with stream sounds https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/142251011 ]
Another intriguing migrant, the American Dipper, catches its meals by diving into the frigid streams of mountain ranges in the Northwest. In colder seasons when their watery cafeterias freeze solid, dippers migrate downslope and downstream where flowing water continues to provide a bounty of tasty morsels.
For BirdNote, I’m Ariana Remmel.
To learn more about the many quirky ways birds migrate, start at our website: BirdNote dot org.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Production Manager: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Digital Producer: Conor Gearin
River sound recorded by Gordon Hempton.
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Yellow-eyed Junco ML 163157971 recorded by M. Taylor, and American Dipper ML 142251011 recorded by T. Floyd.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© September 2021 BirdNote Narrator: Ariana Remmel
migration-29-2021-09-22 migration-29
References:
https://bioone.org/journals/the-auk/volume-134/issue-2/AUK-16-228.1/Alt…
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