Massive bird migration across continents and seas is one of the most spectacular phenomena in nature, involving billions of birds annually. In the autumn, most birds on migration are juveniles migrating for the first time while adults are repeating their migrations. Migration syndrome in individual bird migrants involves multiple behavioural, morphological and physiological adaptations, and migration performance may improve with experience and age. In this review, we discuss in what ways young and adult birds differ with respect to migration performance and compass orientation during migration, how they respond to external information including topography and winds during migration, and what phenotypic characteristics related to migratory behaviour may change over a lifetime in individual birds. Here, we present the prevailing concepts of navigation, including compass mechanisms leading birds across the globe to predictable goals, and the underlying sources of variability within and between individuals and age groups. In particular, we focus on what changes in the endogenous migration program may lead to more efficient realizations of migration with age. We review our data combined with other data presented in the literature, based on different techniques to study the migration phenotype expression in caged and free-flying birds with different migratory adaptations. The widespread use of tracking technology to study birds in different environments and geographical areas has largely contributed to our current knowledge on how migration performance improves with age. Still, there is a need to understand in more detail how migration performance, timing and route choices develop across time in individual migrants, and what navigational information is used to guide birds across the globe from the first and following migrations.

跨越大陆和海洋的大规模鸟类迁徙是自然界中最壮观的现象之一，每年涉及数十亿只鸟类。在秋季，大多数迁徙的鸟类都是第一次迁徙的幼鸟，而成年鸟则在重复迁徙。个体鸟类迁徙的迁徙综合征涉及多种行为、形态和生理适应，迁徙表现可能会随着经验和年龄的增长而提高。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了幼鸟和成年鸟类在迁徙过程中的迁徙性能和罗盘方向的不同之处，它们如何对迁徙期间的地形和风等外部信息做出反应，以及与迁徙行为相关的哪些表型特征可能会在一段时间内发生变化。个体鸟类的寿命。这里，我们介绍了流行的导航概念，包括引导全球鸟类达到可预测目标的指南针机制，以及个体和年龄组内部和之间变异的潜在来源。我们特别关注内生移民计划的哪些变化可能会导致随着年龄的增长更有效地实现移民。我们回顾了我们的数据，结合文献中提供的其他数据，基于不同的技术来研究具有不同迁徙适应性的笼养和自由飞翔鸟类的迁徙表型表达。广泛使用跟踪技术来研究不同环境和地理区域中的鸟类，这在很大程度上有助于我们了解迁移性能如何随着年龄的增长而提高。仍然需要更详细地了解迁移性能如何，