12,000km in 11 days: Godwit shatters record for non-stop avian flight
NEW DELHI: A bar-tailed godwit has been tracked flying non-stop for more than 12,000km from Alaska to New Zealand in 11 days, setting an astonishing world record for non-stop flight by a bird.
The male bird, named 4BBRW in reference to the blue, blue, red and white rings fitted on its legs, began the journey on September 16 and arrived in a bay near Auckland 11 days later, having flown at speeds of up to 88kmph, The Guardian newspaper said in a report.
Bar-tailed godwits, whose weight is between 190gm and 400gm, are said to have the aerodynamic build of a “jet fighter”, the report said.
The bird was tracked through a 5gm satellite tag harnessed on its lower back. The satellite recorded a point-to-point flight of 12,854km, but scientists believe that once rounding errors are taken into account, the journey will have been around 12,200km. The total flight time was estimated at 224 hours, the report said.
The previous longest recorded non-stop flight by a bird, of 11,680km, was recorded in 2007, it added. “They seem to have some capability of knowing where they are on the globe,” the paper quoted Dr Jesse Conklin from Global Flyway Network, a consortium of scientists studying epic migratory journeys, as saying. “We can’t really explain it but they seem to have an on-board map.”
“They are flying over open ocean for days and days in the mid-Pacific; there is no land at all. Then they get to New Caledonia and PNG where there are quite a few islands and, we might be anthropomorphising, but it really looks like they start spotting land and sort of think: ‘Oh! I need to start veering or I will miss New Zealand’,” Conklin said.