Flight behaviours of birds have been extensively studied from different angles such as their kinematics, aerodynamics and more general, their migration patterns. Nevertheless, much is still unknown about the daily foraging flight activity and behaviour of breeding birds, and potential differences among males and females. The recent development of miniaturized accelerometers allows us a glimpse into the daily life of a songbird. Here, we tagged 13 male and 13 female pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) with accelerometers and used machine learning approaches to analyse their flight activity and effort during the chick rearing period. We found that during two hours of foraging, chick-rearing pied flycatchers were flying on average 13.7% of the time. Almost all flights (>99%) were short flights lasting less than 10s. Flight activity changed throughout the day and was highest in the morning and lowest in the early afternoon. Male pied flycatcher had lower wing loading than females, and in-flight accelerations were inversely correlated with wing loading. Despite this, we found no significant differences in flight duration and intensity between sexes. This suggests that males possess a higher potential flight performance, which they did not fully utilize during foraging flights.The uploaded files includes individual morphological measurements (i.e., "Individual_measurements.csv"), as well as accelerometer measurements from 26 pied flycatcher individuals (i.e., ACC_26individuals.zip). The unit of accelerometer measures is in g (1g = 9.8m/s²). The dataset was used in publication https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.247606.

Flight behaviours of birds have been extensively studied from different angles such as their kinematics, aerodynamics and more general, their migration patterns. Nevertheless, much is still unknown about the daily foraging flight activity and behaviour of breeding birds, and potential differences among males and females. The recent development of miniaturized accelerometers allows us a glimpse into the daily life of a songbird. Here, we tagged 13 male and 13 female pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) with accelerometers and used machine learning approaches to analyse their flight activity and effort during the chick rearing period. We found that during two hours of foraging, chick-rearing pied flycatchers were flying on average 13.7% of the time. Almost all flights (>99%) were short flights lasting less than 10s. Flight activity changed throughout the day and was highest in the morning and lowest in the early afternoon. Male pied flycatcher had lower wing loading than females, and in-flight accelerations were inversely correlated with wing loading. Despite this, we found no significant differences in flight duration and intensity between sexes. This suggests that males possess a higher potential flight performance, which they did not fully utilize during foraging flights.The uploaded files includes individual morphological measurements (i.e., "Individual_measurements.csv"), as well as accelerometer measurements from 26 pied flycatcher individuals (i.e., ACC_26individuals.zip). The unit of accelerometer measures is in g (1g = 9.8m/s²). The dataset was used in publication https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.247606.

The tri-axial accelerometer (ACC) datasets from European pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) was measured at 100 Hz. Sixty-four tri-axial measurements, totalling 0.64 seconds, were used to form a behaviour segment. The dataset includes 2707 segments each forming a row in the dataset. Each row contains 193 columns. The first 192 columns are ACC measurements from three orthogonal axes, arranged as x, y, z, x, y, z, ...,x, y, z. The final column is of type character containing the corresponding behaviour, including: bill wiping, flying, food shaking, perching, preening, swallowing, and other. The dataset was first used in a journal publication entitled "Accelerometer sampling requirements for animal behaviour classification and estimation of energy expenditure" (https://doi.org/10.1186/s40317-023-00339-w).

The tri-axial accelerometer (ACC) datasets from European pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) was measured at 100 Hz. Sixty-four tri-axial measurements, totalling 0.64 seconds, were used to form a behaviour segment. The dataset includes 2707 segments each forming a row in the dataset. Each row contains 193 columns. The first 192 columns are ACC measurements from three orthogonal axes, arranged as x, y, z, x, y, z, ...,x, y, z. The final column is of type character containing the corresponding behaviour, including: bill wiping, flying, food shaking, perching, preening, swallowing, and other. The dataset was first used in a journal publication entitled "Accelerometer sampling requirements for animal behaviour classification and estimation of energy expenditure" (https://doi.org/10.1186/s40317-023-00339-w).