The eastern whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus) is a Neotropical migrant that has declined by 70% in recent decades, yet when and where populations are limited throughout the annual cycle is poorly understood. We deployed 115 archival GPS tags across a 9.5-degree latitudinal span (~1000 km; midwestern US) on whip-poor-wills in the summers of 2017 and 2019, and extracted data from 52 tags. The associated .csv file exhibits the raw movement data extracted from the archival GPS tags, where each row represents a GPS fix location for a given bird. The columns present are largely those generated by Lotek, although researchers created a few columns to aid in identification of birds and downstream data analysis. Of particular note is the “season” column, where we quantified the likely behavior (e.g., fall migration) of the individual at the given time and location. These points essentially represent the migratory tracks from both fall and spring (when available), including both the breeding and wintering grounds location. We found that whip-poor-wills circumvented the Gulf of Mexico, and populations across a large latitudinal gradient came together in eastern Texas in early October, resulting in decreased connectivity throughout migration. Breeding-winter migratory connectivity was low (MC = 0.22 ± 0.12), with extensive overlap of core wintering areas in southern Mexico and Guatemala. See methods in manuscript for more info.

See ReadMe file and associated manuscript (including the supporting information).

See ReadMe file and associated manuscript (including the supporting information).