Overall Connectivity for European Roller

The very large majority of recovery data have been obtained after 2000, and concern mainly live recoveries. There are some long-distance recoveries in Africa, but most data concern recoveries on breeding grounds and along the flyways en route to Africa (Finch et al. 2017). This allows to draw the general connectivity: the ringing data indicate an overall direction of migration towards SE Europe, even for populations of West Europe. The main flyway to the wintering grounds passes between Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, though Iberian birds should reach Africa by Morocco. There is only one recovery from the African wintering grounds, in RD Congo in November.

There have been recent tracking initiatives using geolocators, and also GPS devices (Catry et al. 2014; Emmenegger et al. 2014; Finch et al. 2015; Rodriguez-Ruiz et al. 2015). Departure from French breeding sites occurred between mid and end July, to move southward and cross the Mediterranean and the Sahara. When arriving in the Sahelian zone they abruptly turned eastwards to circumvent the Gulf of Guinea and reached the western Lake Chad basin, where they made a final direction shift to reach the non-breeding sites in western Angola in the first half of November. Further departures from wintering sites before mid-February. Tracked birds from Iberia used a very similar route in autumn and spring, though a few birds used a more direct route, with a stopover still in the Lake Chad area. Further tracking data also revealed the importance of the northern savanna zone as a stopover region, and the easterly spring loop (via Arabia) and leapfrog migration of rollers from eastern populations.