Sep 11, 2007, 0:38 GMT
Wellington - A bar-tailed godwit has made what is believed to be a record non-stop flight of more than 11,500 kilometres from Alaska to New Zealand, it was reported on Tuesday.
New Zealand scientists monitored the female bird's annual migration through a satellite transmitter surgically implanted in February before she left the Firth of Thames in the North Island.
Ecologist Phil Battley, of Massey University, told the New Zealand Herald the bird, known only as E7, first flew 10,200 km to the Yalu Jiang Nature reserve in China's Yellow Sea where she spent five weeks refuelling before flying another 7,300 km to breeding grounds in Alaska.
He said she spent two months at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, where she was almost certainly breeding, leaving about mid-July before going to mudflats on the edge of the Yukon Delta where she refuelled again, 'getting nice and fat' until the end of August.
Battley said her southward flight from Alaska to New Zealand was thought to be the longest non-stop migration of any bird.
'She had the option to fly down to the Alaskan peninsula and take off from about 500 km further south but she didn't do that,' he said. 'This indicates the long journey is not such a problem to her.'
The arrival of the godwits in New Zealand is hailed as marking the start of spring in the southern hemisphere.
Battley said the bird was expected to rest in the Firth of Thames until about March, when she would make her way back to Alaska to have her chicks.
'What's really amazing is that once her chicks have fledged they'll be left to their own devices and will have to migrate to New Zealand without parental guidance,' he said.
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