Tens of thousands of bar-tailed godwits are taking advantage of favorable winds this month and next for their annual migration from the mud flats and Muskeg of southern Alaska to the beaches of New Zealand and eastern Australia.
They are traveling more than 7,000 miles without stopping to eat, drink or rest.
Theunis Piersma, a professor of global flyway ecology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said that the more he learns, the more amazing he finds. They are a complete triumph.
The godwit is the longest nonstop migration of a land bird in the world, lasting from eight to 10 days and nights. It is so extreme that it requires new investigations.
A group of researchers stated in a recent paper that the journeys challenge assumptions of bird behavior and orientation. The pursuit of answers to these questions is known as the new ornithology.
Improvements to tracking technology have given researchers the ability to follow individual birds in a detailed way along the full length of their journey, which has shown the extraordinary nature of what bar-tailed and other migrating birds do.
You know where a bird is, you know how high it is, and you know what it is doing. A whole new world has been opened by it.
The scientists wrote in the paper that the Polynesian cultures used the birds to assist in navigation.
A godwit migration has a known distance of over eight thousand miles. It was set last year by an adult male bar-tailed godwit with a tag code of 4BBRW that encountered bad weather on his way to New Zealand and deviated from his plan to land in Australia. He flapped his wings for a long time. He left Alaska again in the last week and is on his way to the south.
Other birds use a technique calleddynamic soaring, while godwits use continuous flapping to power themselves.
The globe-trotting birds are in search of an endless summer and so many leave Alaska to breed and raise their young in the Delta and surrounding areas. Alaska and New Zealand have a lot of insects in their food. New Zealand has no predatory falcons.
The sleek birds with brown-and-white aerodynamic wings, cinnamon-colored breasts, long, slender beaks, and stilt-like legs feed on mud flats until March when they begin their journey back north.
Robert E. Gill Jr., a Biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told people to exercise for nine straight days to convey what is happening here. It makes you think.
The godwits cover more than 18,700 miles in a year because they take a less direct route back north in March. They fly all the way from New Zealand to the Yellow Sea and then back to Alaska. The survival rate is more than 90 percent.
Christopher Guglielmo said that it's not like a marathon. It is similar to a trip to the moon.
The journey of ultra-endurance athletes is possible by adapting.
Godwits are endowed with an unusual ability to change shape. The internal organs are restructured before they leave. The guts and gizzards shrink to lighten the load. Theectoral muscles grow before the plane leaves the runway.
They have aerodynamic wings and are shaped like missiles. Birds double their weight by eating insects, worms and mollusks before embarking on their journey. godwits use fat to fuel their flight because they are obese.
The godwits use bird lungs to perform in the thin atmosphere of high altitudes. In Russia, bar-tailed godwits can be seen flying at altitudes of three to four miles above ground.
Recent research shows that common swifts stay airborne for virtually all of the 10 months when they are not breeding or nesting, even though they eat and drink.
Climate change and other factors are affecting shorebirds. Sea levels are rising in Alaska and the grassy habitat is being taken over by shrubs. The experts are worried about the spread of bird flu, which can be fatal.
Recent studies have asked about how to find the godwits. Researchers wanted to know what mechanisms explain birds acting as if they have a global positioning system. They said that crossing a nearly featureless Pacific Ocean without a compass or map required an internal map. Each of the 15 or 20 years of a bird's life, they find their way back to the same site at the end of their flight.
The aerosphere they live in has been figured out by them. They know when to leave and how high to fly, and they know where they are.
The sun and stars are likely to be relied upon by the godwits. According to some experts, they may be able to sense magnetic lines on the planet using a process called quantumentanglement.
The birds have an ability to forecast weather.
Dr. Gill said that they know what conditions to leave on that will provide wind at the start and throughout the flight. They can look at the conditions in Alaska, between there and Hawaii, between Hawaii and Fiji, and between New Zealand and Australia. It's not known how migration abilities are passed on to the next generation.
Jesse Conklin is an independent researcher at the University of Groningen who studies the species. Young birds do a lot of weird things when they are studied. They weren't just born with it.
It is possible that three-month-old godwits can fly without adult supervision. It has not been confirmed.
Their nonstop migration is a challenge. Birds fly for more than a week even though current models say they should leave after a few days. Dr. Guglielmo said that they couldn't explain how they were able to do this. When we try to use our models, the energy costs we know they used are much lower. Half or less of the energy is used by the birds.
The birds can burn less energy on these journeys than they would on other types of flying. When they are doing monster flights, are they going into a suspended animation state? "What do you think?" Dr. Guglielmo asked. He said they might enter into a state similar to a marathon runner getting into the zone when they are doing this.
It's not clear whether the birds sleep or not. Birds have been shown to be able to sleep with one half of their brain resting on the other. The birds catch up on their rest when they reach New Zealand, according to others.
The timing and safety of the trip are important to experts. Birds gather to create a group mind that helps them make decisions on important matters and take votes on migration, according to some.
A bird will be trying to get someone to go with her when it is near a storm. A bird did this for five days in a row. Everybody else said no when her clock said go.
He said that she was in the first flock out when the weather turned.
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