This is scientific American 60 Second Science. I'm Suzanne Bard.

Most migratory birds spend their winters in one habitat and then fly to a new area in the springtime to breed.

They'll raise one or more broods of young there.

Then come fall, they begin the trip back to their wintering grounds.

But a new study suggests the fainopepla, a jet black bird with a body type like a small cardinal, may have a different strategy.

They might be itinerant breeders. So they breed once in one area, then they

migrate. They go somewhere else and they breed a second time in that new area.

State University of New York, Oswego, evolutionary biologist Daniel Baldissari.

For the Fainopepla, that means nesting in the desert southwest during the springtime before

flying to the oak woodlands of the California

coast for the summer. Baldissari says bird watchers have long suspected that

Fainopla's are itinerant breeders. One hint that the same birds might be breeding in two different habitats

was their vocal behavior. The pointy-headed songbirds are talented mimics, often copying

the vocalizations of other bird species.

If you look at desert birds'

if you look at desert birds, they actually can mimic some species that you don't find in the desert.

Bird species that you would only find out in these woodland habitats.

And the reverse is also true.

Fainopeplis in woodland habitats will make... And the reverse is also true.

Fainopeplas and woodland habitats will mimic species that are only found in the desert.

But to confirm that individual Fainopeplas really do spend the breeding season in two different places.

Baldissari and his team outfitted the birds with tiny GPS transmitters and track their movements.

...