A stopover site is any site where one bird or many stops to rest or feed during migration, says a paper in the current issue of the Journal of Avian Biology. The term “staging area” should be reserved for “sites with abundant, predictable food resources where birds prepare for an energetic challenge (usually a long flight over a barrier such as an ocean or a desert)” the author says.

Read more from the paper in the Journal of Avian Biology here.