Flight Range Estimates for Shorebirds

The authors calculated the costs of flight using the equations of Raveling and Lefebvre (1967), Kendeigh et al. (1977) and Castro and Myers (1988), for six species of shorebirds that vary in size from 25 to 428 g. When expressed as multiples of basal metabolic rates, the first two equations predict very similar costs of flight for all the species, while the third equation predicts increasing costs of flight with increasing body mass.