7,257 Mile Non-Stop Migration!? on Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Scientists from the Ornithological Society of New Zealand have tracked a Bar-tailed Godwit on her continuous 7,257 mile flight across the Pacific Ocean.

As Jennifer Viegas of Discovery News reports, the female godwit didn’t even glide!  “Bar-tailed Godwits use forward flapping flight and seldom ever glide,” lead author Robert Gill, Jr., told Discovery News.
One ornithologist likened her flight to “running for a week,” with the human equivalent being a super-athlete who could somehow sprint without resting at 43.5 mph throughout a week-long haul.
The longest previously-recorded non-stop flight was by a cousin of this bird, a far-Eastern Curlew, who flew 4,038 miles nonstop.
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