Young Bird May Have Set Non-Stop Distance Record By Flying From Alaska To Australia
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A younger bar-tailed godwit seems to have set a continuous distance document for migratory birds by flying at the least 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania, a chook skilled mentioned Friday.
The chook was tagged as a hatchling in Alaska through the Northern Hemisphere summer time with a monitoring GPS chip and tiny photo voltaic panel that enabled a world analysis staff to observe its first annual migration throughout the Pacific Ocean, Birdlife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler mentioned. Because the chook was so younger, its gender wasn’t identified.
Aged about 5 months, it left southwest Alaska on the Yuko-Kuskokwim Delta on Oct. 13 and touched down 11 days later at Ansons Bay on the island of Tasmania’s northeastern tip on Oct. 24, in keeping with information from Germany’s Max Plank Institute for Ornithology. The analysis has but to be revealed or peer reviewed.
The chook started on a southwestern course towards Japan then turned southeast over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a map revealed by New Zealand’s Pukoro Miranda Shorebird Center exhibits.
The chook was once more monitoring southwest when it flew over or close to Kiribati and New Caledonia, then previous the Australian mainland earlier than turning straight west for Tasmania, Australia’s most southerly state. The satellite tv for pc path confirmed it coated 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) with out stopping.
“Whether this is an accident, whether this bird got lost or whether this is part of a normal pattern of migration for the species, we still don’t know,” mentioned Woehler, who’s a part of the analysis undertaking.
Guinness World Records lists the longest recorded migration by a chook with out stopping for food or relaxation as 12,200 km (7,580 miles) by a satellite-tagged male bar-tailed godwit flying from Alaska to New Zealand.
That flight was recorded in 2020 as a part of the identical decade-old analysis undertaking, which additionally entails China’s Fudan University, New Zealand’s Massey University and the Global Flyway Network.
The identical chook broke its personal document with a 13,000-kilometer (8,100-mile) flight on its subsequent migration final 12 months, researchers say. But Guinness has but to acknowledge that feat.
Woehler mentioned researchers didn’t know whether or not the most recent chook, identified by its satellite tv for pc tag 234684, flew alone or as a part of a flock.
“There are so few birds that have been tagged, we don’t know how representative or otherwise this event is,” Woehler mentioned.
“It may be that half the birds that do the migration from Alaska come to Tasmania directly rather than through New Zealand or it might be 1%, or it might be that this is the first it’s ever happened,” he added.
Adult birds depart Alaska sooner than juveniles, so the tagged chook was unlikely to have adopted extra skilled vacationers south, Woehler mentioned.
Woehler hopes to see the chook as soon as moist climate clears within the distant nook of Tasmania, the place it’s going to fatten up having misplaced half its body weight on its journey.
