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Paper short abstract:

The concept of the ‘flyway’ was first introduced as a means of drawing together scientific research on bird migration with conservation. This paper re-examines the flyway concept through a comparison between different groups of birds and the various ways they inhabit flyways.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of the ‘flyway’ was first introduced by Frederick Lincoln in the 1920s as a means of drawing together scientific research on bird migration with conservation. The science of bird banding revealed new details about migration routes and the places they were traced as passing through came to be known as flyways. The concept was first developed in North America to better understand and conserve waterfowl that undertook migrations between the Arctic and wintering areas further south. Flyways were later identified in other parts of the world, connecting places across and between continents through the seasonal movements of birds. The guiding principle was that flyways demonstrated that conservation required cooperation between nations to protect migratory birds and the places they relied upon.

This paper re-examines the flyway concept through a comparison between different groups of birds and the various ways they inhabit flyways. These groups include waterbirds, which have been the traditional focus of flyway thinking because they are clearly reliant on wetlands along their routes for resting and feeding; raptors, which require aerial conduits between land masses more than feeding areas on the ground; and songbirds, which have less pronounced connections to migratory stopovers but are more resistant to the scrutiny of science and the efforts of conservation. The paper will also consider how birds embody flyways through their journeying and how this could help rethink flyways, migration and conservation as ways in which life and world are embodied, connected and politicised.