Consequences of early-life flight performance on long-distance migration behavior

Early-life experiences are crucial for developing complex behaviors across species, with many having evolved social learning strategies to acquire complex skills. However, little is known about how species with limited social learning opportunities develop and master these skills in the wild. In my thesis, I examined how European honey buzzards (Pernis apivorus), a species with limited social learning opportunities, improve their flight performance during early life stages. For that, I used high-resolution multi-sensor movement data from 31 tagged individuals to investigate flight stability, as a proxy for flight performance, during circular soaring. My results indicate contrasting development of vertical and horizontal stability components with vertical stability decreasing with experience, and horizontal stability increasing with experience. Lower vertical stability and higher horizontal stability have a positive effect on migration performance. My findings elucidate how expertise acquisition in circular soaring develops in early life through experiential learning, and highlight the complexity of flight stability as a measure of flight performance and its role in migration success.