A younger bar-tailed godwit seems to have set a continuous distance file for migratory birds by flying at the very least 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania, a fowl professional mentioned Friday.
The fowl was tagged as a hatchling in Alaska in the course of the Northern Hemisphere summer time with a monitoring GPS chip and tiny photo voltaic panel that enabled a global analysis group to comply with its first annual migration throughout the Pacific Ocean, Birdlife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler mentioned. As a result of the fowl was so younger, its gender wasn't recognized.
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, based on information from Germany's Max Plank Institute for Ornithology. The analysis has but to be printed or peer reviewed.
The fowl began on a southwestern course towards Japan then turned southeast over Alaska's Aleutian Islands, a map printed by New Zealand's Pukoro Miranda Shorebird Middle exhibits.
The fowl 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 or not that is an accident, whether or not this fowl bought misplaced or whether or not that is a part of a traditional sample of migration for the species, we nonetheless do not know," mentioned Woehler, who's a part of the analysis mission.
Guinness World Data lists the longest recorded migration by a fowl with out stopping for meals 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 mission, which additionally includes China's Fudan College, New Zealand's Massey College and the World Flyway Community.
The identical fowl broke its personal file with a 13,000-kilometer (8,100-mile) flight on its subsequent migration final yr, researchers say. However Guinness has but to acknowledge that feat.
Woehler mentioned researchers didn't know whether or not the newest fowl, recognized by its satellite tv for pc tag 234684, flew alone or as a part of a flock.
"There are so few birds which were tagged, we do not understand how consultant or in any other case this occasion is," Woehler mentioned.
"It could be that half the birds that do the migration from Alaska come to Tasmania straight slightly than via New Zealand or it may be 1%, or it may be that that is the primary it is ever occurred," he added.
Grownup birds depart Alaska sooner than juveniles, so the tagged fowl was unlikely to have adopted extra skilled vacationers south, Woehler mentioned.
Woehler hopes to see the fowl as soon as moist climate clears within the distant nook of Tasmania, the place it is going to fatten up having misplaced half its physique weight on its journey.
The bar-tailed godwit is not the one fowl to journey extraordinarily lengthy distances.
Final yr, a uncommon Steller's sea eagle was noticed in Massachusetts, greater than 5,000 miles away from its house in Asia.
And a 2015 research decided that blackpoll warblers -- that are tiny, forest songbirds -- make long-range transoceanic voyage stretching as much as 1,721 miles.