Here’s a fascinating short talk given by Joe Wynn at today’s Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour Virtual Conference.

Wynn discusses recent research that sheds light on how Manx shearwaters - prodigious oceanic navigators - find their way home to their breeding colonies.

As you’ll see, these birds - like sea turtles and salmon - apparently learn the magnetic signature of their place of birth (specifically the local magnetic inclination). They then use this information to help them return home.

But sometimes the birds end up in a slightly different place because the earth’s magnetic field has altered in their absence. In fact, it is these very errors that reveal the crucial role magnetic inclination plays in their navigational behaviour.

If you want to read the original research, here’s the reference:
Wynn et al., 2020, Current Biology 30, 1–5 July 20, 2020 a 2020 Elsevier Inc. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.05.039