Trade Winds Fuel Avian Migration- The Case of the Amur Falcon Falco Amurensis a Long-distance Traveler

Amur Falcon Falco amurensis, an autumn passage migrant to northeast India was one of the least talked about species until November 2012 when all that changed following reports of a massive large-scale harvest, numbering thousands of Amur Falcons at a remote locality in Nagaland. This led to a series of conservation actions and one among these was to document their long-distance migration and identify stopover sites in the region, and elsewhere. To document the movements, a total of 15 Amur Falcons were satellite tagged between 2013 and 2019, and across multiple stopover sites in northeast India. Six of the falcons were tracked for at least one complete year, documenting their entire trans-hemispheric migration from northeast India to non-breeding grounds in the African Veldts and to their summer breeding grounds in the Manchurian Steppe, and back. The Falcons coincide their arrival with the onset of northern summer in their breeding and austral summer in their non-breeding grounds, where it is reported to be predominantly wet and falcons likely benefit from the abundant food resources becoming available there. The large congregations of Amur Falcons at stopover sites in northeast India during autumn passage were confirmed from the tracking data with tagged falcons stopping on average for 18 days. Likewise, southern parts of Somalia were identified to be equally important stopover sites though primarily during their return and the tagged falcons stopped on average for 17 days. Between northeast India and Somalia, the tagged falcons undertook nonstop flights of more than five days covering a distance of 5500 to 6000 km, and a large part of this included oceanic crossings. These nonstop flights were clearly fuelled by trade winds, and tagged falcons were also observed to take benefit of cyclonic storms confirming the movements of the species to be strongly attuned to monsoon tailwinds.