All Things Both Great and Small

A tribute to the Bar-tailed godwit, the longest migrating bird in the world

The flight from London to Dallas is about 4,745 miles and takes around 10 hours. Feeling fatigued on the approach to DFW, I started thinking about the Bar-tailed godwit, which migrates across the Pacific Ocean between Alaska and its wintering grounds in Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania.

In 2022, a godwit numbered 234684 left Alaska on October and flew non-stop to Tasmania, the first time a tagged bird has flown this route. It flew a minimum of 8,430 miles in 11 days 1 hour: a record non-stop distance.

Migration route of the Bar-tailed godwit

While the Pacific golden plover does not migrate the same mega distance, he is astonishing for his navigational ability. My brother on Maui has been watching golden plovers for years. Somehow they navigate from Alaska and manage to return to the same yard on the same small island in the middle of the Pacific. How does he do this?

I can understand holding a southerly course, but how does he orient himself longitudinally? This is especially hard to understand if he has to contend with an easterly trade wind or with storm winds out of the east or west.

If you ever grow weary of reading about human beings and all of their folly and greed, you can always take consolation in reading about the wonders of the natural world. As the Ancient Mariner puts it in the final stanza of Coleridge’s poem:

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.