https://www.20min.ch/story/13560-km-jun ... 9422747445
FROM ALASKA TO TASMANIA:
13,560 km – young snipe breaks world record for longest non-stop flight
A bar-tailed godwit, only five months old, spent eleven consecutive days in the air. Its journey of well over 13,000 kilometers could now earn the bird an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
After hatching in Alaska in the summer, the bar-tailed godwit was given a GPS chip and a small solar panel by researchers, with the help of which their flight route could be tracked. According to BirdLife Tasmania's Eric Woehler, he was too young to determine his sex at the time.
At the tender age of about five months, the snipe with the identification number 234684 took off in the Yukon-Kuskwokin Delta in Alaska on October 13 and then set a course southwest towards Japan. The bird then flew southeast over the Aleutian Islands before crossing Kiribati and New Caledonia and flying past the Australian continent. Finally he flew due west and after 11 days and 8435 miles (13,560 km) he landed on the northeastern tip of Tasmania.
"We don't yet know whether the bird got lost or whether these are normal patterns in bird migration," Woehler told the Herald Standard. It is also unknown whether the bird flew in a flock with other animals or alone. "There are so few birds that have been tagged that we don't know how representative this flight is."
The voyage of 234684 – the researchers assume that this took place without a single stopover – should now earn the snipe an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. So far, the record was 12,200 kilometers, which a bar-tailed godwit also covered from Alaska to New Zealand. The same bird surpassed this performance the following year, covering 13,000 km, but the Guinness Book has not yet recognized this.
One thing is certain: 234684, which landed in Tasmania on October 24th, now has to eat a lot to regain its strength. He lost half his weight of around 400 grams on the trip.
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