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Six of Seven GPS-Tracked Great Egrets Returned to the Same Wintering Grounds

Great egret flying over a wooded landscape
Research · Ecology

Six of seven great egrets (Ardea alba) with GPS data from at least two complete winters returned to the same wintering grounds in subsequent years. The birds were part of a group of 15 egrets captured during autumn migration at Lake Druzno in northern Poland and tracked between 2015 and 2023.

The winter-site fidelity was strong even at a fine spatial scale: the centres of consecutive winter ranges for the returning birds were only 0.03–2.7 km apart. The tracked egrets wintered mainly west of their breeding areas, from western Poland through Germany and the Netherlands to France.

The GPS data also showed a clear seasonal difference in migration strategy. Autumn migration lasted longer than spring migration and included more frequent and longer stopovers, while the birds travelled roughly similar distances in the two seasons. Post-breeding dispersal was also recorded in four of seven birds with sufficiently long tracks before they began autumn migration.

Outside the breeding season, aquatic habitats accounted for 33% of recorded habitat use, followed by farmland at 25% and forest at 22%. During parts of the annual cycle, the birds used wetlands, aquatic habitats, pastures and farmland more than their availability alone would predict, while urban areas made up less than 1% of records and were generally avoided. The authors describe the study as the first multi-individual GPS analysis in Europe to combine great egret movement, habitat use, habitat selection and site fidelity across the non-breeding period.

Sources and image credit

  1. Manikowska-Ślepowrońska, B., Cieślińska, K., Ślepowroński, K., Czajka, D., & Jakubas, D. (2026). White in the sky: the non-breeding period of the great white egret Ardea alba from Central and Eastern Europe.Primary peer-reviewed open-access article published online 4 September 2026. Fifteen great egrets captured at Lake Druzno in Poland were GPS-tracked between 2015 and 2023. Six of seven birds with at least two complete winters returned to the same wintering grounds. Autumn migration lasted longer and involved more and longer stopovers than spring migration, while aquatic and agricultural habitats were important outside the breeding season.

Image: Titas Ilekis — wild great egret in flight, photographed 29 August 2024; Wikimedia Commons; representative species image, not one of the GPS-tracked birds · CC BY 4.0 · Source

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