An addendum to ‘Songbird migration across the Sahara: the non-stop hypothesis rejected!’

摘要

In our article on songbird migration across the western Sahara (Schmaljohann et al. 2007), we refrained from citing Biebach et al.’s (2000) radar study on songbird migration across the eastern Sahara. Our intention was not to enter into details and problems of quantifying bird migration with radar. Understandably, some readers asked why the work of Biebach et al. (2000) was not cited and why we claimed to be the first to quantify songbird migration across the Sahara. We apologize for not having cited Biebach et al. (2000) being the first who attempted to answer the question whether songbirds cross the Sahara by a non-stop or intermittent flight strategy (Moreau 1961; Biebach et al. 1986; Bairlein 1988).