Although we know that the shift is connected to a warming climate, which makes increasingly northeasterly areas suitable for wintering, we know very little about the choices individuals make that drive the population shift. In this project, running from 2021 to 2025, we use a combination of GPS tracking, existing tracking data, field observations and various modelling techniques to examine individual Bewick’s swan movement strategies within and between wintering and migration sites. Which factors drive individuals’ choices of wintering area, and how large is the role of temperature? Bewick’s swans have started foraging increasingly on maize rests, but what influence do diet choices have on migration timing? We aim to track both juvenile swans and their parents. In that way, we can find out to what extent wintering area and migration timing are copied between generations and remained faithful to throughout an individual’s life, or to what extent they are flexible and responsive to year-to-year or month-to-month variation in environmental conditions. Taking together these aspects of year-round individual movement, we will have a better, more mechanistic understanding of how the current population shift arises.