The below news story is from
today's Science Daily . The same story is presented with a bit of a different
focus at the Birdlife International website - http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2007/09/godwit_records.html
Bruce
Bird Completes Epic Flight Across The
Pacific
A female bar-tailed godwit, a large, streamlined
shorebird, has touched down in New Zealand following an epic, 18,000-mile-long
(29,000 km) series of flights tracked by satellite, including the longest
non-stop flight recorded for a land bird.
The U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science
Center tracked the odyssey of the bird as part of an ongoing collaborative
effort with colleagues in California and New Zealand. The scientists were hoping
to better understand potential transmission of avian influenza by migratory
birds.
The bird, dubbed "E7" after the tag on its upper leg, was
captured along with 15 other godwits in New Zealand in early February 2007.
There each bird was fitted with a small, battery-powered satellite transmitter.
USGS scientists hoped the transmitters' batteries would last long enough to
track the birds' northward migration to Alaska.
On March 17, E7 departed Miranda on the North Island of New
Zealand and flew non-stop to Yalu Jiang, China, completing the 6,300-mile-long
flight in about eight days. There she settled in for a 5-week-long layover
before departing for the breeding grounds.
On the evening of May 1, she headed east out over the Sea of
Japan and the North Pacific, eventually turning northeast towards Alaska,
crossing the end of the Alaska Peninsula en route to her eventual nesting area
on the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta in western Alaska. This flight was also
accomplished non-stop, covering some 4,500 miles in five days.
E7 was then tracked to the coast of the Yukon Delta where
she joined other godwits preparing for their return flight to New Zealand.
On the early morning of August 29, she took off southeast
back across the Alaska Peninsula, went out over the vast North Pacific and
headed towards the Hawaiian Islands. When less than a day's flight from the main
Hawaiian Islands, she turned southwest, crossing the Hawaiian Archipelago over
open ocean 125 miles west of Kauai, heading towards Fiji. She crossed the
dateline about 300 miles north-northeast of Fiji, and then appeared to fly
directly over or slightly west of Fiji, continuing south towards New Zealand.
In the early afternoon of September 7th she passed just
offshore of North Cape, New Zealand, and then turned back southeast, making
landfall in the late evening at the mouth of a small river, eight miles east of
where she had been captured seven months earlier.
The last leg of E7's journey is the most extraordinary,
entailing a non-stop flight of more than eight days and a distance of 7,200
miles, the equivalent of making a roundtrip flight between New York and San
Francisco, and then flying back again to San Francisco without ever touching
down.
Since they are land birds, godwits like E7 can't stop to eat
or drink while flying over open-ocean. The constant flight speeds at which E7
was tracked by satellite indicate that she did not stop on land.
Godwits do not become adults until their 3rd or 4th year and
many live beyond 20 years of age. If 18,000 miles is an average annual flight
distance, then an adult godwit would fly some 288,000 miles in a lifetime.
The study that recorded E7's epic flight is a collaborative
effort led jointly by USGS and Point Reyes Conservation Science, with
cooperators from Massey University and Miranda Shorebird Centre, New Zealand,
and The Global Flyway Network. The project is funded by the David and Lucile
Packard Foundation, the USGS, Alaska Science Center, and the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release
issued by US Geological Survey.
