Spring migration strategies differ among three waterfowl species that winter in southern New England, USA

Migratory birds face considerable temporal and energetic constraints during spring migration. To balance these demands and maximize breeding success, migratory birds may optimize spring migration by adopting a strategy that primarily favors either minimizing time or energy spent on migration. We used GPS telemetry to quantify interspecific, interindividual, and annual variation in spring migration strategies of three species of waterfowl that share a common wintering area in southern New England, USA, but differed in distance traveled between wintering and breeding areas, breeding latitude, breeding strategy, and breeding range size. Specifically, we characterized spring migration strategies by quantifying ordinal spring migration initiation date, ordinal spring migration completion date, migration duration, number of stopovers, average stopover duration, proportion of migration time spent in stopover, and a stopover to travel ratio. American black ducks Anas rubripes (n = 20) demonstrated the most time‐minimizing spring migration strategy whereas Atlantic brant Branta bernicla hrota (n = 20) and greater scaup Aythya marila (n = 9) demonstrated more energy‐minimizing spring migration strategies. Atlantic brant and greater scaup also had less intraspecific variation in metrics of spring migration strategy than American black ducks, particularly those associated with stopover behavior, highlighting the importance of key stopover sites for long‐distance migrating species. Our findings demonstrate that different species of sympatric‐wintering waterfowl adopt distinct spring migration strategies along the continuum from time‐ to energy‐minimization and have differing extents of intraspecific variation in migration strategy, which together have important conservation implications.