Navigation of Homing Pigeons: An Analysis of GPS-recorded Tracks

Roswitha Wiltschko, Ingo Schiffner, and Bettina Siegmund

Abstract:	Nine adult homing pigeons were repeatedly released from a site 9.1 km west of their Frankfurt home loft, and their routes were recorded with the help of GPS-based flight recorders. Analysis of these tracks shows considerable variability between individual birds, but also between the tracks of each individual concerning the routes chosen. The efficiencies (direct route divided by length of the route taken) were fairly high, ranging from 0.77 to 0.91. As the pigeons became more familiar with the area between the release site and the loft, the efficiencies did not increase significantly, nor did the tracks become more similar, i.e. a tendency for stereotype routes was not indicated. The flying corridor crossed the western suburbs of metropolitan Frankfurt, rich with conspicuous landmarks and highways, but an obvious influence of these features was not observed. Loops and detours in the course of the return flights are attributed to social interactions with other pigeons.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2007) April 23 - 25, 2007 Royal Sonesta Hotel Cambridge, MA
Pages:	32 - 39
Cite this article:	Wiltschko, Roswitha, Schiffner, Ingo, Siegmund, Bettina, "Navigation of Homing Pigeons: An Analysis of GPS-recorded Tracks," Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2007), Cambridge, MA, April 2007, pp. 32-39.
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