CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A tender bar-tailed godwit seems to have set a continuous distance file for migratory birds through flying a minimum of 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania, a hen skilled mentioned Friday.
The hen was once tagged as a hatchling in Alaska right through the Northern Hemisphere summer season with a monitoring GPS chip and tiny sun panel that enabled a global analysis workforce to observe its first annual migration around the Pacific Ocean, Birdlife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler mentioned. For the reason that hen was once so younger, its gender wasn’t recognized.
Elderly about 5 months, it left southwest Alaska on the Yuko-Kuskokwim Delta on Oct. 13 and touched down 11 days later at Ansons Bay at the island of Tasmania’s northeastern tip on Oct. 24, in step with information from Germany’s Max Plank Institute for Ornithology. The analysis has but to be revealed or peer reviewed.
The hen began on a southwestern route towards Japan then became southeast over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a map revealed through New Zealand’s Pukoro Miranda Shorebird Middle displays.
The hen was once once more monitoring southwest when it flew over or close to Kiribati and New Caledonia, then previous the Australian mainland ahead of turning without delay west for Tasmania, Australia’s maximum southerly state. The satellite tv for pc path confirmed it coated 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) with out preventing.
“Whether or not that is an coincidence, whether or not this hen were given misplaced or whether or not this is a part of a regular development of migration for the species, we nonetheless don’t know,” mentioned Woehler, who is a part of the analysis challenge.
Guinness Global Data lists the longest recorded migration through a hen with out preventing for meals or leisure as 12,200 km (7,580 miles) through a satellite-tagged male bar-tailed godwit flying from Alaska to New Zealand.
That flight was once recorded in 2020 as a part of the similar decade-old analysis challenge, which additionally comes to China’s Fudan College, New Zealand’s Massey College and the World Flyway Community.
The similar hen broke its personal file with a 13,000-kilometer (8,100-mile) flight on its subsequent migration closing yr, researchers say. However Guinness has but to recognize that feat.
Woehler mentioned researchers didn’t know whether or not the newest hen, recognized through its satellite tv for pc tag 234684, flew on my own or as a part of a flock.
“There are so few birds which were tagged, we don’t understand how consultant or in a different way this match is,” Woehler mentioned.
“It can be that part the birds that do the migration from Alaska come to Tasmania without delay slightly than via New Zealand or it could be 1%, or it could be that that is the primary it’s ever took place,” he added.
Grownup birds leave Alaska previous than juveniles, so the tagged hen was once not likely to have adopted extra skilled vacationers south, Woehler mentioned.
Woehler hopes to look the hen as soon as rainy climate clears within the far flung nook of Tasmania, the place it’s going to fatten up having misplaced part its frame weight on its adventure.