Australian and New Zealand Bar-tailed Godwits on their way to the Arctic via the Yellow Sea
After the exciting results of the Bar-tailed Godwit Satellite Tracking Program where birds were followed every step of the way between New Zealand to Alaska, via the Yellow Sea, and then 11,000km non-stop back to New Zealand - see below - a new project is underway involving Australian as well as New Zealand birds.
New Zealand Bar-tailed Godwits began their non-stop flight to the Yellow Sea in the middle of March and most of them have already arrived at their 'refuelling' area to replace the enormous amount of fat used up on this first leg of their northward migration. This year the same international team of researchers from Alaska and New Zealand, with assistance from the AWSG, have fitted satellite transmitters to Bar-tailed Godwits in NW Australia.
This year's project will be particularly interesting because the Bar-tailed Godwits that over winter in the NW of Australia are a different sub-species to those from New Zealand and are thought to breed in a totally different area of the Arctic, in Siberia, whereas the New Zealand birds breed mostly in Alaska. It will be particularly interesting to see which migration route the Australian birds use in both directions compared with the New Zealand birds.
A map depicting the flight routes of the Bar-tailed Godwits from Australia and New Zealand. © 2008 USGS. Press image for enlargement.
Seven satellite tagged birds have departed for the Yellow Sea from NW Australia since the 6th April when the first bird, H3, started off on her epic journey. H3 is already in the southern part of the Yellow Sea on the Chinese coast in Jiang Su Province just north of Shanghai.
Yu can find out more about this project at the Alaskan Science Centre pages on the USGS site. By clicking on the Update page you will see the daily progress of godwits from both New Zealand and Western Australia. There is a black godwit icon at the bottom of the page which, when clicked on will download an icon to your desktop which will activate Google Earth with the journey of the birds mapped on it. By clicking on the Maps page you can select individual godwits to follow. Have fun!
The 2007 effort
"Beyond all expectations" would not overstate the information obtained from the 16 godwits that were satellite-tagging in New Zealand in February 2007. In brief, this would include:
Godwits from both North and South islands flying directly and non-stop to the Yellow Sea
The North Yellow Sea and particularly the area around the Yalu Jiang Nature Reserve being a critical staging place
Birds also having non-stop flights from the Yellow Sea to the breeding grounds in Alaska
The Kuskokwim Shoals off the mouth of the Kuskokwim River again proving to be the single most important autumn staging site for godwits in Alaska
The third and final leg of the annual flight, that from Alaska to the non-breeding grounds, being direct across the central Pacific Ocean, and
What would become the media darling, godwit 'E7', being tracked over her complete flight after leaving New Zealand in mid-March to her return in early September, an odyssey that covered almost 30,000 kilometers.