Good godwit! Bird flies 6,000 miles nonstop for eight days to set new record
By
Chris Laker
Last updated at 3:00 PM on 22nd October 2008
A wading bird has set a new nonstop flight record after flying for more than eight days to cross the Pacific.
The bird, a female bar-tailed godwit called E7, was one of nine birds to be fitted with electronic tags before she flew 6,230 miles to reach her winter home in New Zealand.
She flew for more than eight days without food, water or rest. It is the longest direct flight by a bird ever recorded. The previous record was 4,038 miles, achieved by a Far-Eastern curlew.
The winged crusader's stamina-sapping mission even surprised the research team who monitored her.
![Godwit](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090116164415im_/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/10/22/article-1079641-02346594000005DC-115_468x314.jpg)
Record-breaker: A bar-tailed godwit flew for more than eight days nonstop
'It's phenomenal that a bird can go that far', Geoffrey Geupel from PRBO Conservation Science in California said.
Leader of the project, Robert Gill Jr. of the U.S. Geological Survey, said.'These extraordinary nonstop flights establish new extremes for avian flight performance and have profound implications for understanding the physiological capabilities of vertebrates.
'All birds took off with favourable winds. Some birds get shot almost to Hawaii.'
The team tracked eight other godwits on what scientists called "extreme endurance flights" of between 4,355 and 7,258 miles depending on the route.
They fitted them with tiny satellite transmitters to track their journeys. The researchers said the godwit's flight path showed the birds did not feed en route.
The research team have reported their findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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they need their energy, but I understood that they start to 'burn' their organs to accomplish these flights, so only the very, very strong will survive, as they will need a lot of healing and for that good food after arrival. a Dutch biologist, Midas Dekker, once said : "there is a lot of suffering of cold and hunger among birds". So let us not be romantic about their performance, but feed them!
It's always a welcome event when the Godwits arrive in New Zealand, in fact, when the birds first get here, the bells of Christchurch Cathedral (South Island) always ring out to announce their arrival. The birds also home in on the Manawatu Estuary to the delight of Birders and Twitchers in the North Island.
Such feats of endurance put some of us humans to shame!
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