Bird Migration
The Longest Migrating Birds In The World
Birds undertake trips we can barely fathom. They fly across oceans and mountains and deserts. They do not use maps. They rely on the sun and stars as well as the pull of the earth. Some of those treks are very, very long. They are the longest migrations of any animals on earth. Here are the birds with the longest flights.
Arctic Tern The Pole To Pole Champion
This bird wins the prize. The Arctic Tern is a bird for the summer sun. It allows you to bask in the downy warmth of a female breast glistening with the golden glow of someone who’s hatched out in the Arctic, where there really is such as thing as ‘the sun that never sets during summer’. Then it heads to the Antarctic for the other summer sun. It gets more sun than any creature other than us.
Its journey is a giant loop. It does not fly straight. It migrates from Greenland, south to the coasts of Europe and Africa. Then it crosses to Antarctica. The trip back is different. It travels up the coast of South America. One bird was followed and it flew fifty nine thousand miles in 1 year. That’s more than two times around the earth.
This bird will have travelled for 30 years of its life. Over the course of its lifetime it will travel to the distance of the moon and back three times. It travels these miles in pursuit of summer without end. It feeds on small fish and shrimplets found near the surface of the ocean. It sleeps and feeds while riding oceanic winds. Its body is designed to glide. It is light and just right with its wings. It’s the most extreme migration on our planet.
The Bar Tailed Godwit The Non Stop Ocean Crosser
This little bird is a brown sandpiper. It does something unbelievable. It flies from Alaska all the way to New Zealand without stopping. It does not land. It does not eat. It does not drink. It is airborne for eight days and nights over open sea.
The bird gets fat before it goes. It grows extra fat. Its digestive organs shrink to reduce weight. Its body is a fuel tank. It leaves Alaska in autumn. It catches a wind highway. It rides the wind south. It makes landfall in New Zealand and is quite weak. It cannot even walk well. It needs to rest and feed for weeks.
The trip, nonstop, is around seven thousand miles. No other bird flies this far nonstop. Beset haapala Scientists followed one bird that flew 7,500 miles in nine days. These birds teach us the meaning of endurance. They demonstrate how a body can be made for a journey.
Sooty Shearwater The Pacific Giant
This bird is dark gray. It lives over the open ocean. It breeds on islands off New Zealand. Every year, it does a monstrous figure eight across the entire Pacific Ocean. It travels from New Zealand to Japan to Alaska to California and beyond.
Its voyage is forty thousand miles by the route every year. It is always moving. It flies low over the waves. It eats small fish and squid. It harnesses wind currents in order to conserve energy. It is the lord of the windy sea. Its life is constant motion. It pauses for just long enough to raise its chick on some far-flung island. Then it returns to the limitless sky and sea.
The Red Necked Phalarope The Small Bird Who Takes A Big Trip
This is a tiny bird. It weighs less than a coin. It nests in Arctic marshes.) It then migrates to the Arabian Sea in winter. To reach there, it must pass over all of Europe and Asia. Or it could cross the Atlantic.
Its journey is a mystery. It overwinters in the open ocean, well away from land. It eats tiny plankton. We don’t know how that little bird finds a tiny place in such an enormous ocean. It flies thousands of miles. It shows that it doesn’t matter the size. Will matters.
The Pectoral Sandpiper The Endurance Flier
Breeding This bird breeds in the high Artic. Then it heads to South America. One population travels from Alaska to Argentina. That’s a journey of 15,000 miles. But that’s not the special part.
The males make a second trip. They nest in the Arctic and then fly east across Canada. Then they wing south across the Atlantic to South America. They are in search of additional mates. They travel up to thirty thousand miles per year. They’re using their bodies to the max. They are constantly looking for an opportunity to produce more young.
The Albatross The Glider
The wingspan of the Wandering Albatross is the longest. They stretch eleven feet wide. It does not have a long straight flight. For years it flies without once touching land. It soars on ocean winds. It could cover five hundred miles a day searching for food. It will fly millions of miles over its 50-year life. It is the master of the wind. It tucks in its wings and sleeps on the wing. Its path is not a straight one, though, but an orbit that lasts for decades, looping around the southern oceans. It is the one that never flies down.
The Northern Wheatear The Little Traveller of the Wide World
This little bird weighs nothing. It nests in Alaska and across northern Canada. Then in the winter, it flits to Africa. It has to go the whole way through Asia or across the entire Atlantic Ocean. It sails over ice and wasteland and sea. Its journey is one of the lengthiest of any small songbird. It flies alone at night. It uses stars to guide it. It is a tiny brown bird with an atlas the size of Kansas in its noggin.
Why These Journeys Matter
These are miracle trips of nature. And they demonstrate how rough life can be. They show amazing navigation. A bird is born in Alaska and somehow knows to fly to New Zealand. How does it know the way. It knows it on arrival, that is to say. It is inherited from parents in the form of genes.
These journeys are also so fragile. Birds need rest stops. They require wetlands and beaches to feed on. People fill in wetlands. They erect shining cities that discombobulate birds. They are erecting towers, in which birds collide. Climate change screws up the wind patterns and the food supply.
And if a rest stop has disappeared an entire population can die. The Bar Tailed Godwit depends on the Yellow Sea mudflats. Those mudflats are disappearing. Fish of the top 90 3,000 ft. are required by the Arctic Tern. The ocean is warming and fish are going deeper.
We must protect these birds. We have to preserve their rest stops. We need to turn off bright lights in cities during migration season. We need to maintain cleanliness in the oceans.” We must slow climate change.
When you see a wee chick in your yard or garden it may be on a grand mission. Maybe it’s flying from one end of the earth to the other. It needs your help. Plant native trees for it to rest on. Leave water out for it to drink. Keep your windows secure to prevent it from striking them.
These long migrations are a marvel of our world. They are the link between the Arctic and Antarctic. They connect continents. Which is to say, they prove all places are connected by wings. We need to ensure that the sky remains a safe road for these brave travelers. Their flight is a gift to us. It is a story of perseverance and home. We need to listen to that story and assist it in its new growth.