Alaska-Australia Flight May Place Hen in Report Books

By ROD McGUIRK, Related Press

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A younger bar-tailed godwit seems to have set a continuous distance report for migratory birds by flying at the least 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania, a hen professional mentioned Friday.

The hen was tagged as a hatchling in Alaska through the Northern Hemisphere summer time with a monitoring GPS chip and tiny photo voltaic panel that enabled a global analysis staff to comply with its first annual migration throughout the Pacific Ocean, Birdlife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler mentioned. As a result of the hen was so younger, its gender wasn’t identified.

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, in accordance 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 course towards Japan then turned southeast over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a map revealed by New Zealand’s Pukoro Miranda Shorebird Heart exhibits.

The hen was once more monitoring southwest when it flew over or close to Kiribati and New Caledonia, then previous the Australian mainland earlier than turning immediately 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 hen acquired misplaced or whether or not that is a part of a standard sample of migration for the species, we nonetheless don’t know,” mentioned Woehler, who’s a part of the analysis challenge.

Guinness World Information lists the longest recorded migration by a hen 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 challenge, which additionally entails China’s Fudan College, New Zealand’s Massey College and the World Flyway Community.

The identical hen broke its personal report with a 13,000-kilometer (8,100-mile) flight on its subsequent migration final 12 months, researchers say. However Guinness has but to acknowledge that feat.

Woehler mentioned researchers didn’t know whether or not the most recent hen, identified 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 don’t 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 immediately reasonably than by New Zealand or it is perhaps 1%, or it is perhaps that that is the primary it’s ever occurred,” he added.

Grownup birds depart Alaska sooner than juveniles, so the tagged hen was unlikely to have adopted extra skilled vacationers south, Woehler mentioned.

Woehler hopes to see the hen as soon as moist climate clears within the distant nook of Tasmania, the place it’s going to fatten up having misplaced half its physique weight on its journey.

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