May 27, 2010--One For the Birds
I thought it was a big deal when recently Continental Airlines informed me that I had flown 1.0 million miles and I was thus inducted into their Million Mile Club. This meant that I had a version of elite status and could check in without waiting on line and if first class seats were available I would be automatically bumped up. I was feeling pretty good about myself, especially since, in spite of all that flying, I had managed to avoid deep-vein thromboses.
But I was quickly put back in my place the other day when I read about the world's actually most intrepid, most amazing frequent fliers--Arctic Terns, Bar-Tailed Godwits, Ruddy Turnstones, and Bristle-Tailed Curlews. All migrating birds. Serious migrating birds. So serious that the Bar-Tailed Godwits every year appear to fly from just below the Arctic Circle in Alaska to nesting places in Southern New Zealand. And then back again six months later. 7,100 miles in each direction.
Until recently it was thought that while on route these birds skirted the coast of Asia or hopped from Pacific island to island so that they could get some rest and do some carbohydrate or protein packing. But by implanting tiny global tracking devices in a few Godwits ornithologists have discovered that they make the more than 7,000 mile trip non-stop in nine unbelievable days over the open ocean.
They first became suspicious about how they actually undertook such an arduous journey because scientists noticed that just before the Godwits headed south to escape the northern hemisphere's winter they fattened up. Really fattened up. One said they put on so much weight that they looked like "flying softballs."
These and other inter-continental migrators have a remarkable metabolic system. Until reading about them I always had the utmost respect for other marathoners such as Tour de France cyclists who day after day get on their bikes and pedal themselves hundreds of miles up and down the Alps and Pyrenees. They have been tested to show that they have the capacity to raise their normal metabolic rate from what it is at rest to five times that while competing. Amazing.
Bar-Tailed Godwits by contrast routinely elevate their metabolic rate to 8 to 10 times what it is while at rest. And they fly though the night at 40 miles per hour while Lance Armstrong and company are chowing down on whatever delights their chefs prepare for them, curling up in bed for a good night's sleep, and taking their performance-enhancing drugs.
And then, according to the linked article from the New York Times, scientists began to find that other species also make multiple-thousand mile migrations non-stop. Some such as Arctic Terns manage to fly back and forth each year from western Greenland to summer nesting grounds in Antarctica. They have been tracked as flying more than 49,000 miles in a year since before heading north each spring they zig and zag across the Southern Atlantic to feeding places in Africa and South America.
In a 30-year lifetime this means that the tiny Terns travel over 1.5 million miles. Talk about frequent flyers! I wonder what Continental or Delta would do for them.
While we are marveling about what these birds accomplish, isn't it fun to note that ornithologists still do not know how these birds that cross the vast oceans know where they are or how they find their way to where they are headed?
But these incorrigible scientists are nonetheless trying to figure this out. It is clear that birds that migrate over land employ visual landmarks to help guide them and some have the capacity to use the earth's magnetic field as a navigation device. Though it is of limited value when birds approach and cross the Equator where the field lines run parallel to the surface and are thus useless for navigation. Even by man.
But no one yet knows how those Flying Softballs and Arctic Terns year after year get from polar region to polar region and then back again. This fires my imagination and leaves me awestruck, and so I say let's leave some natural mysteries unsolved for us to wonder at.
But I was quickly put back in my place the other day when I read about the world's actually most intrepid, most amazing frequent fliers--Arctic Terns, Bar-Tailed Godwits, Ruddy Turnstones, and Bristle-Tailed Curlews. All migrating birds. Serious migrating birds. So serious that the Bar-Tailed Godwits every year appear to fly from just below the Arctic Circle in Alaska to nesting places in Southern New Zealand. And then back again six months later. 7,100 miles in each direction.
Until recently it was thought that while on route these birds skirted the coast of Asia or hopped from Pacific island to island so that they could get some rest and do some carbohydrate or protein packing. But by implanting tiny global tracking devices in a few Godwits ornithologists have discovered that they make the more than 7,000 mile trip non-stop in nine unbelievable days over the open ocean.
They first became suspicious about how they actually undertook such an arduous journey because scientists noticed that just before the Godwits headed south to escape the northern hemisphere's winter they fattened up. Really fattened up. One said they put on so much weight that they looked like "flying softballs."
These and other inter-continental migrators have a remarkable metabolic system. Until reading about them I always had the utmost respect for other marathoners such as Tour de France cyclists who day after day get on their bikes and pedal themselves hundreds of miles up and down the Alps and Pyrenees. They have been tested to show that they have the capacity to raise their normal metabolic rate from what it is at rest to five times that while competing. Amazing.
Bar-Tailed Godwits by contrast routinely elevate their metabolic rate to 8 to 10 times what it is while at rest. And they fly though the night at 40 miles per hour while Lance Armstrong and company are chowing down on whatever delights their chefs prepare for them, curling up in bed for a good night's sleep, and taking their performance-enhancing drugs.
And then, according to the linked article from the New York Times, scientists began to find that other species also make multiple-thousand mile migrations non-stop. Some such as Arctic Terns manage to fly back and forth each year from western Greenland to summer nesting grounds in Antarctica. They have been tracked as flying more than 49,000 miles in a year since before heading north each spring they zig and zag across the Southern Atlantic to feeding places in Africa and South America.
In a 30-year lifetime this means that the tiny Terns travel over 1.5 million miles. Talk about frequent flyers! I wonder what Continental or Delta would do for them.
While we are marveling about what these birds accomplish, isn't it fun to note that ornithologists still do not know how these birds that cross the vast oceans know where they are or how they find their way to where they are headed?
But these incorrigible scientists are nonetheless trying to figure this out. It is clear that birds that migrate over land employ visual landmarks to help guide them and some have the capacity to use the earth's magnetic field as a navigation device. Though it is of limited value when birds approach and cross the Equator where the field lines run parallel to the surface and are thus useless for navigation. Even by man.
But no one yet knows how those Flying Softballs and Arctic Terns year after year get from polar region to polar region and then back again. This fires my imagination and leaves me awestruck, and so I say let's leave some natural mysteries unsolved for us to wonder at.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:00 AM
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