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Long‐distance migrant passerines are well known to often display high levels of philopatry to breeding and wintering grounds. One could expect that similar selective pressures and similar navigation skills would result in their being faithful to stopover sites, a pattern that has been described for several populations of migratory waders and waterfowl. In this paper, we develop the argument that passerines should suffer from higher costs and receive lower benefits from stopover site faithfulness than waterfowl and waders. Based on Alerstam's (1979)“optimal drift strategy” theory and other considerations, we predict that passerines should have lower stopover site fidelity than geese and waders, and that site faithfulness should decrease with increasing distance from either end of the migratory journey. We present results from a long‐term study on the stopover ecology of migrant passerines in southern Portugal that …