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A bar-tailed godwit has pulverized the world record for flying far with 12,854 kilometers at one stretch across the Pacific Ocean. How do they manage to do that ?!
Pleased to meet you !
The new champion is the bar-tailed godwit bird 4BBRW, so named after the colors blue, blue, red and white at the rings around its legs. It was captured a year before for reasons of research and then fitted with a transmitter. On September 16, 2020 he left Alaska for a trip all the way to Auckland, New Zealand. He arrived there at September 27 after 11 days of non-stop flying, without any rest, food nor sleep. He had pulverized the old record of 11,600 kms to an new 12,854 kms !
Fuelling up in Alaska
These Alaska godwits first fly a few hundred kilometers (...) from their breeding grounds on the tundra to the mudflats along the coast. There they eat all shellfish and lugworms they possibly can and at one point they consist of almost half fat. When they start eating they weigh just under 300 grams but on departure from Alaska they weigh more than 500 grams ! Where they normally just fly straight up they then have to take a run to takeoff.
To be able to carry such a large amount of fuel, birds economize on the size of their organs during migration. That seems to be controlled by an internal clock. Another long-distance migrant, the red knot, gains larger muscles almost automatically around the time of migration, and organs such as stomach and liver become smaller.
The vast distances that birds can travel nonstop are absolutely amazing. An important key to achieve this is the modest amount of energy the birds require to fly. Swedish biologists calculated that a godwit has the smallest fuel consumption of any flying animal known to date. A hummingbird, for example, consumes almost five times as much of its body weight in "fuel" to fly.
Fuelling up in Europe
The godwits that fly from Alaska to New Zealand are from a different subspecies than the godwits that live in the dutch Wadden Sea during spring and autumn. These fly from their breeding grounds on the tundra of Siberia to their wintering grounds in West Africa. Especially in springtime, on their way to the breeding grounds, the european godwits use the Wadden Sea as a refueling station. The Wadden Sea is an essential refueling station for the european birds to be able to complete that migration.
Why visiting the tundras ?
The reason why so many birds travel to the tundras is that there are less predators there that will eat their babies. Evolution has learned them they are more succesfull there as a species. But as soon as there children can fly they all return to the warmth since that makes for a more easy and more relaxing life. As YesTrip knows.
Fuelling up in Portugal ??? Euuhhh ....
An important next refueling stop for the migrating european birds on their return to Africa is the estuary of the river Tejo, just east of Lissabon. Unfortunately the Portuguese government is planning for a new airport there and they (ofcourse) are disregarding the impact of constructing an airport in the middle of this hotspot for birds.
The mandatory environmental impact assessment study did not take into account the 60,000 godwits that gather in the estuary every winter. Nor the Glossy Ibissis, whose numbers have been growing year after year with flocks of over 50,000 were observed this year. All these birds, as well as considerable numbers of larger birds like flamingos, would be in the new airport’s flight path, making bird strikes almost inevitable.
The Dutch governement acts exactly the same way, although not concerning wildlive but human live. All governmental environmental reports concerning a new to build airport were manipulated. So the Lelystad airport was build, taking a € 214 million up to 2020 without having any legal license to handle flights. Nevertheless is it fully able to function, without handling any planes (yet) but with all personel on duty 24/7. Schiphol airport (facilitating the KLM) needs this new airport to move over holiday flights to. That way Schiphol itself can grow further to legally exceed there maximum allowed 500.000 yearly flights. Saving the Planet ? Yes You can !
Paying birds
The Portugese government proposes a big budget for compensation measures but the simple fact is that you can’t pay birds to move somewhere else. They gather somewhere because that spot has the best conditions, and that’s not going to change. That Tejo refueling area is one of the most important wetlands in Europe and it therefor is a Natura 2000 site. Also a lot of that "big budget" is already obliged to by Portugal to protect the species and habitats living there. In other words, it is not at all an extra budget but just a misleading name for it. Building an airport in a Natura 2000 site ? Yes They Can !
Changing migrations
From the changing migration of the godwits to Siberia, for example, one can see how the tundra is warming up much faster than any other part of the world. And the common godwit's migration and distribution also shows the effects of the intensive agriculture on the landscape. Scientists have already stated that the "dutch" birds have started to avoid the dutch Wadden Sea since it is getting to hot there for them.
Navigating
To fly 12,854 kms from Alaska to New Zealand across the huge Pacific Ocean you need at least a good compass and a map. But not just that. It seems that the birds departing from Alaska are also using a very accurate weather map. They certainly don't take the shortest route and sometimes they even make large turns. If you project the high and low airpressure areas and the wind directions onto the map it then turns out that the birds make superior use of favorable wind directions. Weatherapps ? What weatherapps ???
But when you're flying over an endless ocean with no visible landmarks you have to know somehow where you are and what direction you should be heading. The birds must also have something like a GPS to know where they are at any given time. They probably make use of the Earth's magnetic field, the polarization of sunlight and the stars. Will we ever understand how they manage to do that ???
Sleeping
An empty tank after flying more than ten days 24/7 is one thing. Bird researchers in New Zealand now know that the godwits do need to replenish more deficits. During the first few days after arrival these birds sleep a lot more than their counterparts who have been there longer. Even when the food appears on the mud flats at low tide, they continue to sleep. It seems that a lack of sleep after an extreme trek is an even higher price than a lack of fuel. ⏫