Migration is a life-history strategy used by diverse animal taxa to exploit seasonal changes in environmental conditions. Animals are expected to benefit from migrating as a result of having access to more stable food and weather throughout the year, though this may come at the cost of increased energy expenditure and risk during the migratory journey. Assumptions regarding the costs, benefits and challenges of migrating have rarely been empirically evaluated. In this thesis, I use the diverse migration strategies of lesser black-backed gulls as a natural experiment to quantify how migrating to different nonbreeding regions influences behavioural flexibility, time and energy allocation throughout the year, survival probability and reproduction. We additionally validate the use of dynamic body acceleration as a proxy for measuring energy expenditure in this species, which moves using a range of different locomotory modes (flapping, soaring, walking). Contrary to expectations, migration strategy had little influence on variation in migratory behaviours, energy requirements, activity patterns, survival probability or early-stage reproductive parameters. Instead, we found high variation in these traits among individuals using similar migration strategies. This suggests that individual differences in behaviour at finer spatio-temporal scales (e.g. foraging strategy) may be more influential for determining behaviour and energy expenditure, and by extension, fitness, than migration distance. Given the numerous ecological currencies influence by migration strategy, and the scale on which individuals can adjust their behaviour, we conclude that existence of multiple successful migration strategies is likely to be the norm for migratory species.