Monday, October 08, 2007

Mind-boggling

Not the usual fare for this blog, but I found this tidbit amazing: A female Bar-tailed Godwit touched down in New Zealand following an epic, 18,000-mile-long (29,000 km) series of flights tracked by satellite, including the longest non-stop flight recorded for a land bird: a non-stop flight of more than eight days and a distance of 7,200 miles, the equivalent of making a roundtrip flight between New York and San Francisco, and then flying back again to San Francisco without ever touching down.

For more, see USGS story, USGS satellite tracks, and APSN summary.