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Ring Recoveries Mapped Two Major African Flyways for Western Palearctic Common Terns

Common tern in flight
Research · Ecology

Thousands of ringing recoveries have revealed a broad geographical division in the migration routes of common terns (Sterna hirundo) breeding across the Western Palearctic—the study region spanning Europe and the Middle East. The study, first published on 16 April 2026, combined ringing records collected in Europe since 1913 with a large ringing programme in Israel from 2010 to 2025.

The integrated analysis included 3,964 recoveries from the EURING European bird-ringing database, 181 Russian ringing recoveries and 92 previously published geolocator tracks, alongside the Israeli ringing project. This allowed breeding areas to be compared with two main routes to Africa: the East Atlantic flyway along western Africa and an eastern route through the Middle East, Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

Breeding area was strongly associated with migration route

Birds using the East Atlantic flyway predominantly bred in Western Europe, Fennoscandia and the Baltic region. Common terns using the eastern route were more strongly associated with Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

An overlap zone occurred in eastern Germany, western Poland, parts of the Baltic region and southeastern Finland, where breeding birds could use either route. Among the birds included in the direct comparison of the two classified flyways, 2,721 were assigned to the western route and 152 to the eastern route.

Northern breeders tended to leap-frog farther south

The study also found a broad pattern of leap-frog migration. Populations breeding farther north tended to travel longer distances and winter farther south in Africa, passing beyond equatorial wintering areas used by some more southerly breeding populations.

The authors suggest that the species’ strong preference for coastal habitats outside the breeding season may help shape these routes and the links between breeding and wintering areas.

Israeli ringing expanded knowledge of the eastern route

Between 2010 and 2025, 14,374 common terns were ringed at Atlit in northern Israel. Of these, 524 were later recorded outside Israel, while 84 foreign-ringed birds were recorded at Atlit. Records connected the site with 25 countries, especially Ukraine and Poland, but also with eastern and southern Africa and India.

The authors also identify limited evidence for a possible third migration route linking southeastern Europe with the Arabian Sea off western India, but stress that the available data are too sparse to describe this route in detail.

Different breeding populations can encounter very different conditions during migration and winter. Mapping which populations use each flyway helps identify where environmental change or habitat loss outside the breeding season may affect birds that return to particular parts of Europe. The authors stress, however, that the large-scale patterns were derived from the full time span of the ringing dataset and were not analysed separately by historical period. The study therefore maps broad connectivity rather than testing whether Common Tern migration routes have shifted through the century.

Sources and image credit

  1. Kiat, Y., Haviv, E., Perlman, Y., & Schekler, I. (2026). Connectivity between breeding sites, wintering areas, and migration routes in Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) breeding in the Western Palaearctic. Ibis. https://doi.org/10.1111/ibi.70062Primary open-access research article first published 16 April 2026 under CC BY 4.0. The integrated analysis combined 3,964 EURING recoveries, 181 Russian recoveries, 92 geolocator tracks and the 2010–2025 Atlit ringing programme in Israel. The article explicitly documents the 25 countries linked to Atlit and additional named locations in the integrated flyway results.

Image: Alexis Lours / Wikimedia Commons — common tern in flight photographed in France on 6 April 2026; representative species image, not a bird from the ringing dataset; cropped to 16:9. · CC BY 4.0 · Source

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