Airspace is a key but not well-understood habitat for many animal species. Enormous
amounts of insects and birds use the airspace to forage, disperse, and migrate. Despite numerous
studies on migration, the year-round flight activities of both birds and insects are still poorly studied.
We used a 2 year dataset from a vertical-looking radar in Central Europe and developed an iterative
hypothesis-testing algorithm to investigate the general temporal pattern of migratory and local
movements. We estimated at least 3 million bird and 20 million insect passages over a 1 km transect
annually. Most surprisingly, peak non-directional bird movement intensities during summer were of
the same magnitude as seasonal directional movement peaks. Birds showed clear peaks in seasonally
directional movements during day and night, coinciding well with the main migration period
documented in this region. Directional insect movements occurred throughout the year, paralleling
non-directional movements. In spring and summer, insect movements were non-directional; in
autumn, their movements concentrated toward the southwest, similar to birds. Notably, the nocturnal
movements of insects did not appear until April, while directional movements mainly occurred in
autumn. This simple monitoring reveals how little we still know about the movement of biomass
through airspace.