(I have a special admiration for Bar-tailed Godwits - they look cool in flight and they travel 6000+ miles non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand - what a feat!)
By MERVYN DYKES - Manawatu Standard | Friday, 30 March 2007
People around the world can now tune in via satellite to follow the progress of 16 bar-tailed godwits making their return migration from New Zealand river estuaries to Alaska.
Massey University scientists are keeping a close watch on the birds because of concern about declining populations and fears that some that stop over in Asia could contract the H5N1 bird-flu virus and transfer it to Alaska.
Eight of the godwits have been fitted with backpack tracking devices and eight more have had devices surgically implanted.
They can be followed on-line through http://www.werc.usgs.gov/sattrack/sh...s/overall.html
Phil Battley, an ecologist at the Massey University's Palmerston North campus, said the tagging project would provide crucial information about the migratory behaviour of declining species.
Throughout the East Asian and Australasian flyways, 85 percent of shorebird populations are declining, and 40 percent of shorebirds inhabiting Oceania are classified as threatened or near- threatened, he said.
The 11,000km southern migration of the godwit from Alaska to New Zealand was thought to be the longest non-stop migration of any bird, but little was known about the northern route.
Dr Battley is the leader of a New Zealand team involved in a collaborative research project with the United States Geological Survey and PRBO Conservation Science in the US to learn more about global migration patterns of declining shorebird species in the Pacific Basin.
The 16 tagged birds were from the Firth of Thames and Golden Bay.
Dr Battley said three of them had recently landed in the Yellow Sea, with one covering 11,000km in just over seven-and-a-half days at an average speed of 56kmh. "This probably qualifies as the longest migratory flight of its type measured in the world," he said. "Everything points to this bird having flown non- stop from New Zealand to China."
The information gathered from the birds' flight will answer questions about their stops en route and their routes from New Zealand to Alaska.
Dr Battley, who has been working on movements and demographics of godwits for the past three years, said the birds have a major stopover in the Yellow Sea region of eastern Asia. Other birds have stopped in Papua New Guinea, the southern Philippines and on an island in Micronesia. The rest are flying toward China or Korea.
By MERVYN DYKES - Manawatu Standard | Friday, 30 March 2007
People around the world can now tune in via satellite to follow the progress of 16 bar-tailed godwits making their return migration from New Zealand river estuaries to Alaska.
Massey University scientists are keeping a close watch on the birds because of concern about declining populations and fears that some that stop over in Asia could contract the H5N1 bird-flu virus and transfer it to Alaska.
Eight of the godwits have been fitted with backpack tracking devices and eight more have had devices surgically implanted.
They can be followed on-line through http://www.werc.usgs.gov/sattrack/sh...s/overall.html
Phil Battley, an ecologist at the Massey University's Palmerston North campus, said the tagging project would provide crucial information about the migratory behaviour of declining species.
Throughout the East Asian and Australasian flyways, 85 percent of shorebird populations are declining, and 40 percent of shorebirds inhabiting Oceania are classified as threatened or near- threatened, he said.
The 11,000km southern migration of the godwit from Alaska to New Zealand was thought to be the longest non-stop migration of any bird, but little was known about the northern route.
Dr Battley is the leader of a New Zealand team involved in a collaborative research project with the United States Geological Survey and PRBO Conservation Science in the US to learn more about global migration patterns of declining shorebird species in the Pacific Basin.
The 16 tagged birds were from the Firth of Thames and Golden Bay.
Dr Battley said three of them had recently landed in the Yellow Sea, with one covering 11,000km in just over seven-and-a-half days at an average speed of 56kmh. "This probably qualifies as the longest migratory flight of its type measured in the world," he said. "Everything points to this bird having flown non- stop from New Zealand to China."
The information gathered from the birds' flight will answer questions about their stops en route and their routes from New Zealand to Alaska.
Dr Battley, who has been working on movements and demographics of godwits for the past three years, said the birds have a major stopover in the Yellow Sea region of eastern Asia. Other birds have stopped in Papua New Guinea, the southern Philippines and on an island in Micronesia. The rest are flying toward China or Korea.
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