Marathon flight of the godwit

ACCORDING to Wings, BirdWatch Ireland’s magazine, a new long distance flight record has been set.

In September, a bar-tailed godwit left its breeding grounds in Alaska and flew to New Zealand, where it will spend the winter, a distance of 11,600 kilometres. The bird, which had been ringed and fitted with a satellite tracking device, is believed to have flown non-stop for eight days, breaking its own record of the previous year when it travelled 10,200km in nine days.

“Over a nine month period”, says the report, “this bird clocked up over 29,000 km, flying from New Zealand to China, then over to Alaska, then back to New Zealand.” Bar-tailed godwits can live for up to 22 years, during which time a bird breeding in Alaska and wintering in New Zealand would have flown about 638,000km.