Tracking migration of black‐headed buntings Emberiza melanocephala reveals the Iranian Plateau as an ecological barrier along the Indo‐European flyway

The black-headed bunting is one of the few species that migrate along the Indo-European flyway, and its migration routes and phenology are poorly understood. We provide the first individual-based year-round tracking study describing route choice and timing of black-headed buntings migrating from a breeding site in Croatia to a 6000 km distant non-breeding region in Maharashtra, central India. To evaluate landscapes important for the black-headed bunting migration, we quantified land covers and climates along the migration corridor. Stopover areas during the post-breeding migration were concentrated in four distinct regions: the Balkan Peninsula, central Anatolia, along with the Zagros mount…