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       #Post#: 371514--------------------------------------------------
       young bar-tailed godwit migrates 8000 miles without stopping
       By: kkt Date: February 1, 2026, 4:04 pm
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       Meet the bird that can fly 8,000 miles without stopping
       By Bruce M. Beehler
       Bruce M. Beehler is a naturalist and author. His most recent
       book is “Flight of the Godwit: Tracking Epic Shorebird
       Migrations.”
       [quote]Many of us find animal achievements fascinating,
       especially stunning feats of migration and navigation. We are
       awed by southbound autumn travels of monarch butterflies flying
       from New England to their winter retreat in Mexico. Or the young
       male mountain lion that trekked from Black Hills of South Dakota
       to Connecticut in search of a territory. Or the travels of
       Chinook salmon, born in a mountain stream in Idaho and growing
       to adulthood in the depths of the Pacific Ocean off the Aleutian
       Islands.
       It turns out that some animal migration is more fantastic than
       we knew, thanks to recent studies of super-migrators,
       peripatetic members of the sandpiper family. The most familiar
       of these super-migrators is the sanderling, the little white
       sandpiper we see chasing waves along our Mid-Atlantic beaches in
       late summer. This bird nests above the Arctic Circle and winters
       in the far Southern Hemisphere, stopping to rest and feed on
       coastlines along the way.
       But the superstar is a large and rarely seen sandpiper — the
       bar-tailed godwit.
       In 2022, a young godwit code-named “B6” that hatched in western
       Alaska set the record for longest known sustained avian flight.
       After being fitted with a two-ounce satellite transmitter, the
       young bird was tracked flying south across the Pacific, finally
       veering sharply westward to land safely on Tasmania. This bird
       traveled 8,321 miles over 264 hours of flight — that’s 11 days,
       without touching down on water or land, without anything to eat
       or drink.[/quote]
       This bar-tailed godwit had a super lightweight tracker
       installed.  The flight path shows approximately south-southwest
       flight until it reaches the latitude of Tasmania and then
       turning due west. This is reminding me very much of the sailing
       path of sailing ships prior to the late 1700s - when the sailors
       had very good ways of determining their latitude, but only dead
       reckoning to determine their longitude.  They would travel in
       approximately the direction of their destination until they
       reached the correct latitude, then turn due east or west as
       needed for the last bit so they'd know they were approaching it
       correctly.  The birds on their first migration are unguided,
       their parents migrate separately so no one is showing them the
       way.
       It's also a great feat of endurance, 11 days of great exertion
       without anything to eat or drink and without touching down, for
       a two-pound bird.
       So the birds probably have a pretty good method of keeping on a
       north-south course but only a vague idea of what longitude they
       are at.  The article in the Washington Post is a very brief
       account.  The same author's book listed above presumably goes
       into more depth.
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