Bird sets record after flying 13,500 km from the USA to Australia without landing

A young bird of the species Laponica lemongrassPopularly known as Fuselo or Charlet, this bird broke the world record for nonstop flight for migratory birds by flying 13,560 kilometers from Alaska without landing in Tasmania, Australia.

While still a chick, the bird was tagged with a GPS tracking chip and a small solar panel that allowed an international research team to track its first annual migration across the Pacific Ocean.

BirdLife’s Tasmania coordinator Eric Woehler said it would be impossible to determine the sex of the bird because it is so young.

According to data from the Planck Institute of Ornithology, the roughly five-month-old body left southwest Alaska from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta on October 13 and landed in Ansons Bay on the northeast tip of the island of Tasmania on October 24, 11 days later. in Germany. The research containing the results has not yet been published.

After leaving Alaska, the bird began heading southwest toward Japan and then turned southeast over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, according to a map published by the Pukorokoro Miranda Shorebird Center in New Zealand.

The bird headed southwest again as it flew over Kiribati and New Caledonia, then crossed the Australian mainland before turning directly west into Australia’s southernmost state, Tasmania.

“We still don’t know if this was an accident, if the bird went missing, or if the species was part of a normal migration pattern,” Woehler, one of the researchers, told the British newspaper The Guardian.

Guinness World Records lists the longest migration a bird has recorded without stopping for food or rest at 12,200 km; this is the mark reached by a male spindle flying from Alaska to New Zealand in 2020.

This flight was recorded as part of the same research project involving Fudan University of China, Massey University of New Zealand and the Global Flyway Network, investigating seven migratory routes of birds, two of which pass through Brazil: the Atlantic and Central routes.

Second broken record

The same bird broke its own record by flying 8,000 miles on its migration last year, the researchers say. However, Guinness has not noticed this success until now.

Researchers don’t know whether the last bird recognized by satellite tag 234,684 flew alone or as part of a flock, Woehler said.

“There are so few tagged birds that we don’t know to what extent this event is representative,” said the researcher.

“It may be half of the birds that migrate Alaska directly to Tasmania instead of New Zealand, it may be 1 percent, this may be the first time,” he said.

Adult birds leave Alaska earlier than juveniles, so the tagged bird is unlikely to follow more experienced travelers south, Woehler said.

The researcher now hopes to meet the bird in person when the wet weather improves, in a remote corner of Tasmania, where he stopped to feed and gain weight after losing half his body weight during the trip.