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Navigational strategies of homing pigeons at familiar sites: do landmarks reduce the deflections induced by clock-shifting?

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Abstract

To analyze the navigational strategy of homing pigeons at familiar sites in view of a possible role of local landmarks, two groups of pigeons—one familiar to the release site, the other unfamiliar—were released with their internal clock shifted 6 h fast, with untreated birds of both groups serving as controls. The two groups showed median deflections of 67% and 57%, respectively, of the expected size, with no consistent difference in the size of the deflection between familiar and unfamiliar birds. This clearly shows that familiarity with the release site and with the local landscape features does not affect the size of the deflections induced by clock-shifting. Obviously, pigeons familiar with the release site do not change their navigational strategy, but still continue to determine their home course solely as a compass course. General problems with orientation by landmarks are discussed; however, landmarks may help birds to recognize a site and recall the respective course.

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Notes

  1. When arguing in favor of landmark use, Wallraff et al. (1999) dismissed these findings by Füller et al. (1983) with the argument that the pigeons, having homed from the same site all summer, were ‘directionally trained’. However, this argument is inconsistent: if Wallraff et al. (1999) assume that birds extremely familiar with the route from the release site to their home loft, knowing every landmark intimately, prefer to fly compass courses over following sequences of landmarks, under what circumstances can they expect pigeons to rely on landmarks at all?

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Acknowledgements

Our work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant to R.W.). We sincerely thank S. Ratzel, M. Stahl, and P. Thalau for their valuable help with training the pigeons and with the critical tests. Thanks are also due to Anna Gagliardo, Università di Pisa, for making her paper accessible to use before publication. The experiments comply with the current laws and regulations on animal experiments in Germany.

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  1. Zoologisches Institut, J.W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M., Siesmayerstrasse 70, D-60054, Frankfurt, Germany

    Roswitha Wiltschko, Bettina Siegmund & Katrin Stapput

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  1. Roswitha Wiltschko
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  2. Bettina Siegmund
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  3. Katrin Stapput
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Correspondence to Roswitha Wiltschko.

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Communicated by T. Czeschlik

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Wiltschko, R., Siegmund, B. & Stapput, K. Navigational strategies of homing pigeons at familiar sites: do landmarks reduce the deflections induced by clock-shifting?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 59, 303–312 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-005-0043-6

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