Abstract

Flyways for migrant passerines between Europe and Africa are well known, but migration between Europe and Asia – involving European-breeding birds migrating to Asia for the winter, Asian-breeding birds migrating to Europe for the winter and Asian-breeding birds passing through Europe on their way to Africa – is less well known. This paper summarises movements between Europe and Asia using ringing data from 14 passerine species. Although there are clear patterns in the recovery data of some migratory species, three irruptive species account for half of all recoveries between Europe and Asia. Introduction Most long-distance migrant passerine species breeding in Europe move to Africa for the northern winter. The flyways between Europe and Africa are well documented and well known. However, movements between Europe and Asia are less well known (Lisovski et al. 2021).In early winter 2005, hundreds of Common Redpolls Acanthis flammea were ringed in the Netherlands, part of a substantial invasion of the species into western Europe. It would be easy to speculate that these birds were coming from Scandinavia or European Russia, but a ringed bird caught at Wassenaar, Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands, in November 2005 changed that perception: the bird’s ring read ‘China’ (van der Spek et al. 2007)!