Route following and the pigeon's familiar area map

Abstract

Homing pigeons (Columba livia) have been the central model of avian navigation research for many decades, but only more recently has research extended into understanding their mechanisms of orientation in the familiar area. The discovery (facilitated by GPS tracking) that pigeons gradually acquire with experience individually idiosyncratic routes home to which they remain faithful on repeated releases, even if displaced off-route, has helped uncover the fundamental role of familiar visual landmarks in the avian familiar area map. We evaluate the robustness and generality of the routefollowing phenomenon by examining extant studies in depth, including the single published counter-example, providing a detailed comparison of route efficiencies, flight corridor widths and fidelity. We combine this analysis with a review of inferences that can be drawn from other experimental approaches to understanding the nature of familiar area orientation in pigeons, including experiments on landmark recognition, and response to clock-shift, to build the first detailed picture of how bird orientation develops with experience of the familiar area. We articulate alternative hypotheses for how guidance might be controlled during route following, concluding that although much remains unknown, the details of route following strongly support a pilotage interpretation. Predictable patterns of efficiency increase, but limited to the local route, typical corridor widths of 100-200 m, high-fidelity pinch-points on route, attraction to landscape edges, and a robustness to clock-shift procedures, all demonstrate that birds can associatively acquire a map of their familiar area guided (at least partially) by direct visual control from memorised local landscape features.

The Influence of Social Parameters on the Homing Behavior of Pigeons

“…On day six and in the single flights between the pair and group flights, efficiency stagnated or even decreased slightly. This is consistent with the findings of Guilford & Biro [9] who observed a gradual development of route performance with decreasing effects after a rapid initial improvement. This is also characteristic of learning processes in general.…”

“…The preferred routes of homing pigeons are rarely efficient straight lines, and there are differences between homing tracks from unfamiliar release sites and familiar release sites [9]. It is not entirely clear what makes a route from familiar sites preferred by pigeons, but Lipp et al [10] have suggested that at least railway tracks and highways were used for following on the way home from familiar release sites.…”

The sun compass revisited

“…A navigational map aids homing from unfamiliar places, but once birds are familiar with an area, they are thought then to resort more readily to a map consisting of familiar landmarks (Guilford & Biro, 2014). One hypothesis for how such a map provides guidance is via goalward compass instructions associated with memorized local position cues (e.g.…”

Sensory mechanisms of long-distance navigation in birds: a recent advance in the context of previous studies

“…That is why one first thinks of piloting or route following (returning by a sequence of familiar landmarks) and path integration or route reversal (calculating the homeward direction from memorised distances and bearings). Both navigational strategies mentioned can be used by birds for navigation, though perhaps only at short distances around the goal during a homing phase (Guilford and Biro 2014; but see Wallraff 2000). These two strategies, however, cannot explain navigational performances documented by long-distance displacement studies when birds were passively transported by experimenters across hundreds and thousands of kilometres, often being unpredictably rotated in enclosures with a restricted view of the surrounding space (Chernetsov et al 2008; Thorup et al 2007).…”