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- “In accordance with their inherited calendars, birds get an urge to move.\u00a0When migratory birds are held in captivity, they hop about, flutter their wings and flit from perch to perch just as birds of the same species are migrating in the wild.\u00a0The caged birds \u2018know\u2019 they should be travelling too. This migratory restlessness, or Zugunruhe, was first described by Johann Andreas Naumann\u2026[who] interpreted Zugunruhe to be an expression of the migratory instinct in birds.”<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The urge to migrate is of course instinctive\u00a0and captive birds have no control over it. Zugunruhe has been produced in the lab\u00a0in captive migratory birds by artificially changing the length of day which causes the anxiety of the birds to increase and changes their normal sleep pattern (many birds migrate at night). Most North American bird species are migratory\u00a0to a greater or lesser degree (interestingly, far fewer South American birds are migratory) so when I see captive birds I often wonder what they might\u00a0experience during migration seasons.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/short-eared-owl-7880-brightened-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"short-eared-owl-7880-brightened-ron-dudley\\"")
1\/1000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nShort-eared Owls are described as\u00a0“partial migrants”. They’re highly migratory in the northern part of\u00a0 their range and even though\u00a0some SEO’s at mid-latitudes\u00a0may be present in the same general\u00a0area\u00a0year-round\u00a0banding data indicates that even\u00a0those individuals\u00a0migrate north\/south and west\/southwest\u00a0seasonally.<\/p>\n
Most examples of birds exhibiting\u00a0migratory stress or anxiety in captivity\u00a0I’ve read about in the past have been songbirds so without giving it much thought I had just assumed (assumptions are inherently perilous) that zugunruhe was primarily a phenomenon of passerines. I\u00a0was wrong. Raptors experience zugunruhe too, which is at least part of the trigger for them to migrate in the first place.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/galileo-0098-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"galileo-0098-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nMost of the captive birds I experience personally\u00a0are unreleasable raptors used in education programs, including Galileo the Short-eared Owl I cut out of barbed wire (with help from Mia). As many readers know Galileo is now an education ambassador for HawkWatch International and of course is captive.<\/p>\n
I’ll never be able to look at this photo again without wondering if Galileo wasn’t looking wistfully at the skies and longing to migrate.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/galileo-0046b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"galileo-0046b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nWho knows what really<\/em> goes on in the mind of a captive raptor like Galileo…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
PS – After publishing this post I asked good friend Tana Peery Hunter (she helps to care for HWI’s education birds) if she ever noticed increased anxiety in their captive raptors during migration seasons. This was her response on Facebook: “yes, especially with Aymara the swainsons hawk. She can be quite the little drama queen during fall migration!”<\/em><\/p>\n