THE animal kingdom’s record for the longest non-stop flight has been broken by a migratory wading bird. The bar-tailed godwit clocks up an epic 11,000 kilometres in the air during its annual migration from Alaska to Australia or New Zealand.
Bar-tailed godwits break their northward migration at staging posts in Japan and around the Yellow Sea off China. En route they make unbroken flights of up to 8000 kilometres – the current record, which is shared by two other waders, the red knot and the great knot. But much less is known about the bar-tailed godwit’s return journey.
Robert Gill…
