ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press
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CANBERRA, Australia (AP)– A young bar-tailed godwit appears to have actually set a non-stop range record for migratory birds by flying at least 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania, a bird specialist stated Friday.
The bird was tagged as a hatchling in Alaska throughout the Northern Hemisphere summertime with a tracking GPS chip and small photovoltaic panel that made it possible for a global research study group to follow its very first yearly migration throughout the Pacific Ocean, BirdLife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler stated. Due to the fact that the bird was so young, its gender wasn’t understood.
Aged about 5 months, it left southwest Alaska at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta on Oct. 13 and touched down 11 days later on at Ansons Bay on the island of Tasmania’s northeastern idea on Oct. 24, according to information from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. The research study has yet to be released or peer evaluated.
The bird began on a southwestern course towards Japan then turned southeast over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a map released by New Zealand’s Pūkorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre reveals.
The bird was once again tracking southwest when it flew over or near Kiribati and New Caledonia, then past the Australian mainland prior to turning straight west for Tasmania, Australia’s a lot of southerly state. The satellite path revealed it covered 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) without stopping.
” Whether this is a mishap, whether this bird got lost or whether this belongs to a typical pattern of migration for the types, we still do not understand,” stated Woehler, who belongs to the research study task.
Guinness World Records notes the longest taped migration by a bird without picking up food or rest as 12,200 kilometers (7,580 miles) by a satellite-tagged male bar-tailed godwit flying from Alaska to New Zealand.
That flight was tape-recorded in 2020 as part of the very same decade-old research study task, which likewise includes China’s Fudan University, New Zealand’s Massey University and the Global Flyway Network.
The exact same bird broke its own record with a 13,000- kilometer (8,100- mile) flight on its next migration in 2015, scientists state. Guinness has yet to acknowledge that task.
Woehler stated scientists did n