[h=1]Flying for their lives[/h] Ann Jones
Updated June 17, 2016 09:49:10
Every year, millions of shorebirds fly between Australasia and the Arctic. But for many, this will be their last flight.
The first experience of Australia, for most international visitors, is an area of destroyed shorebird habitat: Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport.
This flat tidal zone once provided a feeding point for thousands of migratory shorebirds. The birds still come, but in far smaller numbers.
The birds come to Botany Bay, and other mudflats across Australia and New Zealand, every year to eat. They aim to get so fat that they'll start to look like feathered sumo wrestlers.
They're migrating to chase an eternal spring and summer ? and the seasonal blooms of food that come with it: the Arctic Circle's mosquito boom in June and July; Yellow Sea mudflats teeming with shellfish in April and May; and the shores of Australasia in November and December.
The act of migration isn't exceptional, but the distance of this one is. In 2007, a female bar-tailed godwit was tracked flying 11,680 kilometres from Alaska to New Zealand in nine days straight. It is the longest recorded bird flight on the planet....
