Migratory Bird Welfare: Threats During Long-Distance Journeys

Billions of birds undertake long-distance migrations annually, facing a gauntlet of natural and human-created hazards. Understanding the welfare dimension of migration helps direct conservation efforts toward the most impactful interventions.

Key Facts

An estimated 5 billion birds migrate between Europe and Africa each autumn; billions more travel through the Americas and across Asia.
Long-distance migrants like bar-tailed godwits fly non-stop for up to 11 days covering 12,000 km — one of the most extreme physiological feats in the animal kingdom.
Artificial light at night (ALAN) disorients nocturnal migrants, causing them to circle illuminated buildings and towers until exhausted — a phenomenon called "light trapping."
Communication towers, wind turbines, and power lines kill an estimated 100-300 million birds annually in the USA alone.
Climate change is disrupting the timing of migration relative to food availability (phenological mismatch), causing arriving migrants to find their food resources absent.
Illegal hunting of migratory birds during spring and autumn passage remains widespread in Mediterranean countries, with tens of millions of birds killed annually.
Dehydration and starvation during migration across inhospitable terrain (deserts, open ocean) are significant natural welfare risks amplified by habitat loss of stopover sites.
Stopover habitat — areas where migrants rest and refuel — is being lost at alarming rates to coastal development and wetland drainage.

Welfare Considerations

Migration is inherently demanding — the physiological stress of sustained flight, sleep deprivation, and resource uncertainty is extreme. However, human-created hazards greatly amplify natural welfare risks. Light-trapped birds may circle for hours, exhausting their fuel reserves and dying of hypothermia and starvation — a preventable welfare harm addressable through building light reduction programmes. Illegal spring shooting kills birds in breeding condition, preventing reproduction and causing direct suffering. Mist-netting for food or the cage-bird trade involves capture stress, injury, and often death in transport. The loss of stopover habitats forces migrants to continue flights beyond their physiological capacity, causing starvation in transit. Each of these threats is addressable through policy, enforcement, and individual action.

What You Can Do

Support Lights Out programmes in your city — turning off unnecessary building lights during migration reduces bird strikes and light trapping mortality.
Advocate against illegal bird trapping and hunting in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries through organisations like BirdLife International.
Donate to protection and restoration of stopover habitats — wetlands, coastal scrub, and woodland that are essential refuelling stops.
Plant native shrubs and trees in your garden to provide food and shelter for migrant birds passing through.
Support climate action as a bird welfare issue — phenological mismatch from climate change is an emerging and serious threat to migratory species.