Marbled Godwit Marbled Godwit Hover over to view. Click to enlarge. Marbled Godwit This is a large and highly varied group of birds that do not have many outward similarities. Most are water birds that feed on invertebrates or small aquatic creatures. The order is well represented in Washington, with seven families: Family: Scolopacidae This large and diverse family of shorebirds is made up mostly of northern breeders that migrate long distances. Their highly migratory nature leads them astray fairly frequently, and rarities often show up outside their normal range. Many of these mostly coastal birds forage in relation to the tides, rather than the time of day. They use a variety of foraging techniques, but the most common techniques are picking food from the ground or water, or probing into wet sand or mud. Those that probe generally have sensitive bills that open at the tips. Most members of this group eat small invertebrates. Many make dramatic, aerial display-flights during courtship. Nesting practices vary, but both parents typically help raise the young. Clutch size is usually four, and both parents generally incubate. The young are precocial and leave the nest within a day of the hatching of the last chick.

Most feed themselves, although the parents generally tend the young for a varying period of time. The female typically abandons the group first, leaving the male to care for the young until they are independent. Status: Uncommon migrant and winter coast. Rare east. Listen: Maps General Description Marbled Godwits are large shorebirds with slightly upturned bills. They are mottled brown with cinnamon underwings that are distinctive in flight. In winter, they are plain underneath, but during the breeding season they have dark barring on their breasts and bellies. Habitat They nest in native prairie habitats: wet meadows and grassy areas near water. During migration and winter, they are coastal, foraging on mudflats, salt marshes, estuaries, and coastal pools. Behavior Marbled Godwits are commonly seen in flocks with Whimbrels and Long-billed Curlews, both large and brown like the Marbled Godwit. The Marbled Godwit moves slowly, probing for food under the mud with its sensitive bill. It often inserts its entire bill into the mud, and its head is totally submerged at times. Diet In summer, Marbled Godwits eat insects, roots, and seeds.

During migration, they may forage almost exclusively on tubers. In coastal areas, they eat mollusks, crustaceans, and other aquatic creatures that live in the sand and mud. Nesting Marbled Godwits form loose colonies without obvious territorial boundaries. To attract a female, the male performs a high, circling flight display, followed by a steep dive. The male selects a nest site in a dry spot with short grass and starts a shallow scrape. If the female approves it, both will add grass, and sometimes a canopy of grass is arched over the nest. Both parents incubate the four eggs for 24 to 26 days. The young leave the nest soon after hatching and find their own food. Both parents protect and tend the young for the first 15 to 26 days, after which the female usually leaves. The male stays with the young until they can fly. Migration Status Most Marbled Godwits winter in coastal California or Mexico, and some range as far as South America. They migrate in flocks, with juveniles following a few weeks behind the adults. Birds migrate south through Washington in late August through mid-September, and return to the breeding grounds in April through early May.

Conservation Status Marbled Godwits breed in Canada and the interior and north-central area of the United States. The Canadian Wildlife Service estimates the population at 171,500 birds. They were common in the 1800s, but were over-hunted in the early 1900s. Protection from hunting has helped the population rebound, but the destruction of grassland breeding habitat now limits the population. When and Where to Find in Washington Marbled Godwits are most likely to be seen in protected estuaries along the outer coast, from Grays Harbor south, from April to early May, and from July into October. Birds seen later in the fall, from September to October, are usually juveniles. Large flocks often feed on the golf course in Ocean Shores (Grays Harbor County) in the spring. A flock also winters regularly at Tokeland in Willapa Bay (Pacific County). Other possible sites are Blaine (Whatcom County) and Sequim (Clallam County). Abundance Godwit - Definition and synonyms of godwit in the English dictionary. Translation of godwit to 20 languages.

godwit Meaning of godwit in the English dictionary DICTIONARY ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD GODWIT Of unknown origin. Etymology is the study of the origin of words and their changes in structure and significance. PRONUNCIATION OF GODWIT exclamation Godwit is a noun. A noun is a type of word the meaning of which determines reality. Nouns provide the names for all things: people, objects, sensations, feelings, etc. WHAT DOES GODWIT MEAN IN ENGLISH? Godwit The godwits are a group of large, long-billed, long-legged and strongly migratory waders of the bird genus Limosa. Their long bills allow them to probe deeply in the sand for aquatic worms and molluscs. They frequent tidal shorelines, breeding in northern climates in summer and migrating south in winter. In their winter range, they flock together where food is plentiful. A female bar-tailed godwit holds the record for the longest non-stop flight for a land bird. They can be distinguished from the curlews by their straight or slightly upturned bills, and from the dowitchers by their longer legs.

The winter plumages are fairly drab, but three species have reddish underparts when breeding. The females are appreciably larger than the males. Although not common tablefare today, they were once a popular British dish. Sir Thomas Browne writing in the seventeenth century noted that godwits "were accounted the daintiest dish in England." The name godwit originates in Old English with god meaning good, and wit coming from wihte, meaning creature. A flock of migratory waders, dominated by bar-tailed godwit...

Synonyms and antonyms of godwit in the English dictionary of synonyms SYNONYMS WORDS RELATING TO «GODWIT» godwit international group hudsonian range publishing black tailed brazoria call identification migration godwits large long billed legged strongly migratory waders bird genus limosa their bills allow them marbled about birds cornell learn identify godwit life history cool facts sounds calls watch videos shorebird with bill days festivals come celebrate explore lush redwood coast observe many wildlife through selection field trips lectures zealand most common arctic migrant wader predominantly brown above pale below photos arkive rare elegant wading very displays broad white wings rump national audubon society crow sized dark mottled cinnamon buff wing linings pinkish birdwatch ireland guilbneach earrdhubh small curlew status Translation of «godwit» into 20 languages TRANSLATOR TRANSLATION OF GODWIT Find out the translation of godwit to 20 languages with our English multilingual translator . The translations of godwit from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «godwit» in English.

List of principal searches undertaken by users to access our English online dictionary and most widely used expressions with the word «godwit». FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «GODWIT» OVER TIME The graph expresses the annual evolution of the frequency of use of the word «godwit» during the past 500 years. Its implementation is based on analysing how often the term «godwit» appears in digitalised printed sources in English between the year 1500 and the present day. Examples of use in the English literature, quotes and news about godwit EXAMPLES 10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «GODWIT» Discover the use of godwit in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to godwit and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature. 1 The Black-tailed Godwit Casimyr at that time Stadholder of Friesland dated October 9, 1628 in which he complains about the abuse of the netting of Godwits and other wildfowl in Friesland, of which the export from Friesland was forbidden. The reader will notice at ...

‎ 9 Minnesota's Endangered Flora and Fauna to BASIS FOR STATUS: Confined to the northern Great Plains, the marbled godwit's breeding range extends from the prairies of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, south to central Montana and east to northwestern Minnesota. Barbara Coffin, Lee Pfannmuller, 1988 10 Shorebirds of Australia 40 bilngirnhr coast NT Terri: Sandpqaer, Grey-tailed Tattl-tr, 6 Bar-tailtd Godwit, East-em Curlew, Great g Knot, Ruddy Turrntone -11 Burlrjraghiam all ~r Eastern Curlew, am-oaea Gfldnil 2 42 arm ls!-anid — rur Ear-tailed Godwit 1 -13 tow ... Andrew Geering, Lindsay Agnew, Sandra Harding, 2007 10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «GODWIT» Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term godwit is used in the context of the following news items. 1 UK coastal walks: Brownsea island, Dorset ...

and the shy water rail, with its distinctive 'pig-squealing' call. Brownsea also has internationally important birds such as the bar tailed godwit. «Telegraph.co.uk, Jul 15» 2 As habitats vanish, migratory birds flock to N. Korea shores A godwit dubbed "E7" made international headlines in 2007 when, thanks to a tiny transmitter implanted in her abdomen, she was confirmed to ... «The Park Record, Jul 15» 3 Texas payout announced for BP oil spill damage claim Marbled godwit (Limosa fedoa) taking off in shallow water near the ocean coast, Galveston, Texas, USA. Getty Image/NewsCred ... «Bakken.com, Jul 15» 4 It's Early July and Many Birds are Already Beginning to Migrate South The elegant and scarce Hudsonian godwit, with its long, upturned beak, the rarest of the 4 godwit species on the planet, is a regular at South ...

«WCAI, Jul 15» 5 Audubon's 'Birds of America' at Yale: creating a masterwork one … Two other copper plates from the production of “The Birds of America,” the American woodcock and great marbled godwit, are housed at the art ... «Yale News, Jul 15» 6 Making room for more capacity ... pop-up restaurants at the Corn Exchange in Manchester on behalf of Aviva, and a Corten steel statue of a Godwit for South Ribble Council. «Engineering Capacity, Jun 15» 7 China's massive seawalls decimate godwit populations Massive coastal reclamation on the China/North Korea border is harming New Zealand's godwit population. «Nelson Mail, Jun 15» 8 “Minnie” the cow with unusual markings arrives at Welney Wetland … “Species like the lapwing and the rare black-tailed godwit prefer short grass so that they can easily spot predators; whereas snipe and ...

«Norfolk Eastern Daily Press, Jun 15» 9 Mickey Mouse mark on Minnie the calf proves a hit at WWT Welney … Species like the lapwing and black-tailed godwit prefer short grass so they can easily spot predators; whereas snipe and redshank rely on their ... «Ely News, Jun 15» 10 Tubbataha now an EAA Flyway network site ... occurs with up to five individuals at a time, as well as Chinese Egret, Swinhoe's Storm Petrel, Eurasian Curlew and Black-tailed Godwit. «eco-business.com, Jun 15» REFERENCE Return of the godwit | New Zealand Geographic Living World Return of the godwit Thanks to satellite tracking, we now known that godwits fly the 12,000 km journey from Alaska to New Zealand without ever stopping. Written by Denis Welch Photographed by Neil Fitzgerald Imagine a bicycle wheel, right? Take away the half of it. The hub of the wheel is Banks Peninsula: this is the central nodal point for the whole east coast of the South Island. The Southern Alps from Marlborough down to Southland.

Everything that breeds in these braided river systems comes from the coast to the south, migrating north, but doesn’t go round Banks Peninsula. Instead, these birds cut inland over Christchurch and end up at the Avon and Heathcote estuary. We’re like the Heathrow Airport of the South Island.” Andrew Crossland is walking the shores of that estuary­ or this airport—on a windy March day. A Christchurch City Council ranger, he knows these waters and their wildlife intimately. Thirty-eight years old now, he has been coming here since he was a boy. Terns, shags, stilts, oystercatchers, all manner of shorebirds and waders, he knows them well. Even personally. “This white-faced heron here,” he says, indicating a bird I couldn’t tell apart from the next one. “I’ve known him for more than 10 years. He’s really tame. He lives up on the hill up the back.” Then there are the paradise shelducks: they’re every­where in Christchurch now, but Crossland can recall when there was just one pair, in 1997, and how they nested by a pond near a school in Beckenham.

He can tell you, too, that there are five species of cormorant here: the whole of Europe has only three. Pointing out dotterel footprints, he says: “I started moni­toring the birdlife on the estuary when I was at high school, so a lot of these birds I’ve been monitoring for 24 years straight. I’ve got about 17,000 pages of field notes on birdlife here. In terms of birdlife this estuary is probably monitored more closely than any other in New Zealand.” All birds are equal, but in terms of public affection and admiration, some birds are more equal than others. The godwit is the one we Kiwis seem to have the softest spot for, with the exception, perhaps, of the kiwi itself. You don’t, however, tend to find the kiwi in poetry, as you do the god-wit. It has been name-checked, famously, in Charles Brasch’s poem The Islands. Her face still stained yellow from Alaskan mud, a bar-tailed godwit rests while the tide covers the mud flats of the Avon/Heathcote Estuary near Christchurch.

Always, in these islands, meeting and parting Shake us, making tremulous the salt-rimmed air; Divided, many-tongued, the sea is waiting, Bird and fish visit us and come no more. Remindingly beside the quays the whiteShips lie smoking; and from their haunted bay The god wits vanish towards another summer. The Islands and in Robin Hyde’s novel The Godwits Fly, James Mc­Neish’s book As for the Godwits, and Bridget Armstrong’s play Flight of the Godwit. Maybe it’s the beauty of the word itself (origin, alas, obscure); but more likely it’s because New Zealanders identify with godwits which, like us, are always leaving the country and coming back. March is the time of year when the godwits take off for their long migratory flight to Alaska, where they feed and breed before returning to New Zealand in September and October. They come and go from several estuaries throughout the country but the Avon/Heathcote has be­come particularly identified with them, perhaps because the people of Christchurch have taken them to their hearts.

When the birds go, as many as 600 citizens gather to fare­well them; when the first ones return, the cathedral bells are rung in the city. Ornithologists have known for a long time that godwits cover an enormous distance: from Alaska to New Zealand it’s about 12,000 kilometres. Only the Arctic tern flies fur­ther, from Antarctica to the Arctic. What no one realised until relatively recently is that most of the godwits do the return trip non-stop. Flying continuously (not even glid­ing) over the ocean at an average of 80 km/h, they make the journey in six to eight days. Thanks to transmitters attached to the birds, we now know that this is the world’s longest non-stop bird flight. The Arctic tern takes frequent rests on the water and fishes for food; the godwits, having stuffed themselves before leav­ing, don’t even stop to eat. Hail, then, Limosa lapponica!—or, to give it its Maori name, kuaka! It’s by no means the only migratory bird to come to these shores, but it works the hardest to do so.

Ac­cording to legend, it even gave the first voyagers to Aotearoa from Polynesia the idea that there was something down south worth travelling towards: they kept seeing it hurtling past once a year, as if it had somewhere definite to go and wasn’t going to stop till it got there. If that’s true, then it could have been one of those light-bulb moments when Kupe, say, scanned the skies above Hawaiiki and muttered to himself, “Hmm…where are those birds going? Must find out…” [Chapter Break] Right now, it’s late March and Andrew Crossland is taking us out on the Southshore Spit, on the northern side of the estuary. Round the tip of the spit and there the godwits are, several score of them, oceanside, gathered at water’s edge. Mostly bar-taileds but maybe a few black­taileds or Hudsonians among them. Facing north. Like passengers at a departure gate. Waiting for the right moment to announce itself—a slight shift in the wind, perhaps. “Most of the movement relates to the atmospheric conditions—favourable tail winds, that sort of thing,” says Crossland.

The hundreds of godwits that came here six months ago make their departures over a five-to-six-week period in groups of five to 25, and stick together the whole way, as far as anyone knows. “It makes sense from an energy point of view that they fly in a flock,” explains Crossland, “because the lead bird takes the pressure and the other birds are able to go in the slipstream.” While unwitting godwits search for food in the rich mud of the Firth of Thames, Adrian Riegen and a dedicated team of volunteers set cannon nets at a high tide roost site, then wait. A carefully timed detonation sends the nets safely over and onto the resting birds. But about 300 juveniles—you can tell them by their brown breasts; the adults ready for breeding have brick-red plumage—stay over for the winter, rather than risk the trip. So if a godwit can survive the South Island winter, why would any of them feel the need to leave at all? “Well, ‘Why come?’ is the other question,” replies Cross­land. “You have to look at it from another perspective.

There’s a whole heap of related species that breed up in the Arctic and you’ve got 24-hour or 18-hour daylight in the Arctic summer, so you can live right through: they can do so much in one day. “The permafrost melts, so all of the mosquitoes and other insects are in huge abundance; there are amazing food sup­plies for them. Just thousands and thousands and thousands of square miles of habitat with, like, no people. “So those birds are breeding up there in the world’s best breeding conditions for that short number of months. Then it gets cold real quick and they can’t survive there; they’ve got to get out of it. So they migrate southwards.” Why New Zealand, though? What’s so special, for in­ stance, about the menu here at the Restaurant Chez Avon/Heathcote? “This is a very rich feeding ground. The oystercatchers are feeding on shellfish, mainly cockles: there’s an amazing abun­dance of cockles in this estuary. The godwits are mainly feed­ing on polychaete worms—sea worms that you dig up for bait.

“The stilts are visual feeders, not probers, so the other two are probing but the stilts are picking stuff off the sur­face—little flies and crustaceans. You can see them walking around looking.” The godwits’ journey north takes them to a halfway stop on the shores of the Yellow Sea between China and Korea, where there’s reliable estuarine feeding (or has been up to now: those grounds are being threatened by massive recla­mation projects). Then, after four or five weeks building up their strength, they fly on to Alaska. (It’s the return journey that godwits fly non-stop.) How many survive the trip north? We know from banded birds. Explains Crossland: “Of the, say, 70 birds that we caught about three years ago, more than 60 came back the following year and there’s probably about 50-odd here three or four years later, so there’s actually quite high survival.” The survival rate is better here, too. Earlier this year two people deliberately set their dogs to chase the flock, but thankfully that kind of hoonery is uncommon these days.

Most people know not to walk too near and disturb the birds, says Crossland, who praises the strong community spirit around the estuary. “People just become exposed to the information and the children learn it as well. People didn’t know what the birds were in the past—they were just some seagulls. Now every one in this neighbourhood knows what a godwit is and knows what an oystercatcher is and knows how to behave.” Crossland, who worked for DOC before getting this job, also speaks highly of the ecologically minded local authori­ties. The city council spotted his talent early. “When I was about 17 I went along to a meeting on the estuary and stood up and told all these things I’d been seeing. Basically, various council people asked me to give them information and I be­came their kind of main adviser. It’s the same with the plant people and other people around Christchurch, the council’s always been really good that way.

“Christchurch in my 25 years’ involvement hasn’t had very much of that banging your head against a brick wall, against all the bureaucrats who sit in their little offices with their Tupperware lunch tins and their shorts and their walksocks going, ‘Bring back Andrew Mehrtens’. We haven’t had that.” [Chapter Break] Fast forward six months to late September, and we’re back on the estuary to see the godwits that have jetted in from Alaska, as per their annual schedule. They’ve been touching down regularly for the past three weeks and more are still coming in, bedraggled and hungry. First they get a bit of kip; then it’s serious tucker time. They’ll even feed through the high tide and within a few days will have regained so much weight that they’re indistinguishable from those who wintered over. This time Crossland takes us round in his 4WD, talking non-stop about wildlife and wetlands. He talks so knowledgeably (and quotably) about his work that you can’t help but envy him, as someone who clearly enjoys doing what he does for a living—wildlife monitoring and habitat restoration.

He seems at one with the natural world, attuned to its moods, wise in its ways. Once, when he lay prostrate and motionless in the sand, oystercatchers used his body as a windbreak. “If you dig a hole in the sand and just sit in it,” he says, “the birds will often come around you.” We drive out along the southern shore of the estuary, towards Redcliffs and Sumner, where property values have migrated skywards in recent years, infesting the hillsides with flash new homes, their angularity jarring with the natural environment in a way that you can only see them as attempts to subdue nature rather than harmonise with it. Here, according to a real estate agent’s sign, is “where your future starts today!” Moving along, on a mild grey day punctuated by spitting rain, we park for a while on top of Balmoral Hill, which has a tremendous view of the Canterbury Plains to the west, stretching to the Southern Alps, and Pegasus Bay to the north.

Below us lies the entire Avon/Heathcote estuary, which has three main components: 850 ha of mudflats, 250 ha of oxidisation ponds and about 100 ha of lowland paddock. The shorelines are constantly shifting, and not always just at the sea’s behest: human care and attention modify this tidescape too. Driving back past McCormacks Bay, for instance, Crossland points out three artificial islands in a lagoon. They were built in 1991 as a roost for godwits, he says, “but we’ve been manipulating the habitat as of late, and we’ve not cut the grass for a couple of years to pretty much make those islands unusable as bird roosting sites”. As some big wetlands around the margin of the estuary have been developed, they really want to encourage the birds to use those sites. Just past Ferrymead there’s a marshy area of 20 ha to the left: once a horse paddock, it’s now the Charlesworth Wetland Reserve. Birds like godwits and oystercatchers love it.

Cannon netting is one method researchers use to capture godwits for various studies. The main objective on this day is to swab birds to investigate the remote possibility that they might carry avian flu. Five years ago, Crossland and his colleagues scraped the paddock to bare earth and planted native saltmarsh plants that have since self-colonised. “Salt is wonderful,” he says, “because it’s the best weedkiller you can get. It basically kills the invasive grasses, and most of the plants that like salt are native plants. Further along the road going north we come to the Bexley Wetland Reserve, part of which used to be a car wrecker’s yard. Contaminated material in the soil was put in a mound and capped with layers of gravel and silt, then topsoil and mulch so it could be planted up. A moat right round this site—deeper on the outside, shallower on the inside, so birds can feed—keeps predators like cats out. They’ve thought of everything. [Chapter Break] Now we’re back where we were in March, at Southshore Spit, only on the inland side this time, looking out on a long sandbank exposed by the low tide.

There are shafts of sunlight over the city to the west, the roar of surf behind us to the east. The sandbank’s covered in birds, most of them taking a rest on one leg or two. Every now and then the godwits at the far right end of the sandbank fly up, circle around and land again. Crossland sets up his spotting scope on a tripod and describes the view. “In the centre of the roost are the variable oystercatchers; they’re the biggest ones. Beyond them are the pied oystercatchers, so they’ve both got dry feet, and then on the edge there are the godwits. The godwits get pushed down to the bottom of the roost. So when a tidal surge comes through, all the godwits get pushed up into the air.” Why? “Because they’re smaller. It’s largely because of their size. It’s just bullying on the roost.” In any case, he says, godwits tend to be edgier than the other birds, nervous about predators. “When they’re in the breeding grounds, anything big and brown that moves, like a skua or bird of prey, they’re really nervous.

So when they see a skua [which preys on their chicks in the Arctic], they go crazy. “These guys have just come from being Mum and Dad Godwit on a wee nest in the middle of the tundra, and anything on the horizon that looks wrong freaks them out. They’re here and all of a sudden they see a brown seagull and whoa! the whole lot go up. If one goes up, the whole lot will go. But they tend to relax as the summer goes on.” We know a lot about godwits. We know that the females are larger and have longer beaks, that the birds can live for about 20 years. We know what they like to eat and what makes them nervous. And we know—well, we’re pretty sure—that, astonishingly, young godwits barely a month old fly from Alaska to New Zealand without their parents shepherding them along. On March 17, 2007, the godwit known as E7—the first godwit to have her total annual migration monitored by satellite—left the shores of Miranda and flew 10,200 km to Yalu Jiang, China.

She rested there for five weeks before, on May 1, beginning her 5000 km journey to breeding grounds in Alaska. Four months later, on August 29, she began her arduous eight-day journey back to New Zealand. As it became apparent that E7 was making the 12,000 km flight across the Pacific without stopping, she began to attract attention all over the world. In New Zealand, daily reports of her progress were covered in newspapers, radio and television. Her achievement aroused the kind of national pride and emotion that Jean Batten’s solo flight from England to New Zealand did (although it’s unlikely E7 will have a building or a street named after her). When she finally arrived back in Miranda she managed to elude photographers by touching down in the dead of night, and promptly disappeared into the crowd. The reluctant celebrity had just made the longest non-stop flight of any land bird on Earth. But we don’t know how they pair up, especially when they commute up and down the world’s largest ocean. Even Crossland can’t figure that one out. “Can they only re-meet by going to the breeding ground and landing on the nesting site and hoping that the mate comes back?

Do their young find their own way here and actually go to where Mum and Dad are, or do they go somewhere else?” One of Crossland’s tasks is to count godwits. For many years, he says, he would count various bird populations up to eight times a month; now he does them perhaps once a month “because I understand from my earlier data how the seasonal abundance pattern works”. He thumbs through a battered old diary. Back on August 7 he counted 171 godwits that had wintered over, but internal movement brought a big drop to 64 on September 4. On September 7 there were suddenly 274 godwits, but by the following day, 326. The first influx had clearly arrived from Alaska, as some of them still bore traces of their breeding plumage. On September 15 there were 394. And today? 1030. The likely maximum summer population is about 2000, but whatever the final number, at any given time there are hundreds of the creatures on the land or in the air, constantly moving about and mingling with one another: how can he possibly tell how many there are?

“I count the legs and divide by two,” he says with a grin. [Chapter Break] A part from the Avon/Heathcote, godwits are fond of just about anything that qualifies as a large food-rich estuary. They can be found every summer, says Massey University ornithologist Phil Battley, congregating in northern harbours like Kaipara, Manukau and Kawhia; the Firth of Thames is another popular spot, as is Farewell Spit. Their total New Zealand population is currently estimated to be about 80,000. The affable Battley, a senior lecturer in zoology in Massey’s Ecology Group, studies all kinds of shorebirds but for a while godwits were of particular interest to him: he was part of an international research project run by the US Geological Survey out of Alaska, a project which culminated last year in a fluke discovery that set the ornithological world alight and even made the general news headlines. For centuries, birdwatchers have relied on banding in order to find out where migratory birds go. Even today, an elaborate system of different-coloured bands and flags attached to birds continues to provide critical information about migration patterns.

But it obviously cannot tell us what the birds are up to during their flights, nor how long it takes them to get from point A to point B. For that, ornithologists are relying increasingly on satellite telemetry. Along the southern shore of the Avon/Heathcote Estuary plush homes overlook the internationally significant summer resting site for up to 2000 bar-tailed godwits. Proximity to a major urban area makes disturbance a major threat to the birds. Time and energy spent avoiding humans (and their dogs) adds to the task of refuelling for the long autumn flight north. Last year, several godwits summering over in the Firth of Thames were equipped with transmitters before they left for the north. Bob Gill, of the US Geological Survey, explains how this procedure is carried out. “The larger females can handle a unit that we surgically implant in them. We have a veterinarian along with us when we catch birds, the birds are anaesthetised, they’re hooked up with a heart monitor, a respirator—it’s just like surgery you or I would have for removal of an appendix or something.

“The radio’s inserted into an air sac underneath the rear end of the bird, so the antenna comes out right by the tail. The males, being smaller, can’t handle the weight of that implanted unit, so they have a much lighter solar-powered unit that has to be applied externally. Those are attached through what’s called a figure-eight leg-loop harness… imagine the bird stepping into it, with the unit fitting on the back and the antenna, again, coming out horizontally. “We designed these antennas so they’d be coming out on the plane of the bird and wouldn’t be sticking up, inducing wind drag.” The signals sent out are picked up by National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration satellites and tracked on computer screens by Gill and his colleagues in Anchorage. Thanks to this technology, it has been confirmed that the bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri) flies non-stop further than any other bird in the world.

In a Proceedings of the Royal Society paper, Gill, Battley and eight other authors state that in 2007 a female godwit unceremoniously named E7 flew 11,680 km from Alaska to New Zealand without stopping, easily exceeding the previous official record of 6500 km, flown by far eastern curlews. A flock of godwits flying in tight formation is always an impressive sight, and especially so at twilight. Ever alert, flocks of godwits will erupt in a cloud of wings at any sight of a potential predator such as a harrier or skua. It was a fluke finding, Battley admits, because by rights E7’s transmitter batteries should have run out of puff long before she got near the South Pacific. Researchers had hoped at best to track her northward migration and maybe just a bit of the trip back. “The batteries should last for about 300 hours of transmission time and last year we had about 600 hours of transmission time,” says Battley.

What’s more, we know that E7 made the same trip again this year, because Battley saw her last summer at Miranda on the Firth of Thames, and again in September, “looking very shabby and worn out, probably because she had just come in on migration”. This year, however, only two of five transmitters worked all the way up to Alaska, and none at all worked for the return trip. And now there are no more plans to do further transmitter work, as funding provided by the Packard Foundation for godwit research has run out. “Each unit costs about $5000–$6000. And in some ways the key questions have already been answered,” says Battley. In any case, he adds, no matter how smart the satellite technology, the battery aspect is always going to be problematic. “Unless someone can develop a radically different battery, that’s always going to be the heaviest part of the arrangement.

The way to get around the battery is to have a solar panel on it, but of course that has to be on the outside of the bird, and that’s when you start getting interference with the wind flow.” [Chapter Break] The survey has revealed two other remarkable aspects to the flight of the godwits. One is that the birds don’t stop to eat: by steady feeding before they leave, they bulk up to the point where nearly half their body weight is pure fat, which they then burn off as fuel when they fly. The second thing is that their wings are always flapping: they rarely glide, because they’d waste energy regaining height if they did. Even satellite telemetry, however, can’t tell us how high they fly. “We don’t know that,” admits Gill. “We have reports from colleagues on oceanographic vessels of godwits blown past them a couple of metres off the waves; we have other reports of a colleague having to crank his neck back and look at small spots in his binoculars way up high, 1000 metres up probably or higher, but just smoking across the sky to the south.” Nor do we know why they leave when they do. Can they somehow sense when the meteorological moment is right?

Or, as another paper co-authored by Gill puts it, “Is weather across the Pacific teleconnected such that certain departure cues at northern latitudes assure relatively favourable conditions along most of the route?” If so, what effect will major climate change have on them? According to Gill, the greater threat is the projected changes in both the frequency and the intensity of the storms that come across the north Pacific, the storms that produce the winds that get these godwits started on their migration. “If all storms increase in frequency and intensity, I think godwits will adapt to it; but if the storm track shifts for whatever reason, it could very well not provide the tailwind they need.” In the meantime, he and his colleagues “propose that this transoceanic route may function as an ecological corridor rather than a barrier, providing a wind-assisted passage relatively free of pathogens and predators”. Stunning stuff. Through studying them so closely and for so long, presumably Gill has grown very fond of godwits. “How do you not,” he replies, “given what they do?” It’s a sentiment with which most of us Kiwis clearly would agree. Animal Migration | Learn Science at Scitable What is Migration?

Most people think of migration as the seasonal movement of a flock of birds between their breeding and non-breeding sites. In fact, bird migration is probably the biological phenomenon that has attracted the most interest among non-scientists, and has one of the longest traditions of scientific investigation in biology (Berthold 2001). However, there are many other forms of animal migration, including journeys between east and west, complex round-trips involving land and ocean, altitudinal journeys up and down mountains, and vertical movements through the water column of oceans and lakes (Hoare 2009). What sets migration apart from other forms of movements is that migration typically involves travelling from one type of habitat to another (Aidley 1981). Who Migrates? Migrating animals are found in all major branches of the animal kingdom. They include taxa as diverse as fish, crustaceans, amphibians, reptiles, insects, mammals and slime moulds (Bowlin et al. 2010). The distance covered during some of the journeys, and the altitude at which they can take place, are simply astonishing (Table 1).

Let’s take a closer look at the migrations undertaken by a bird, an insect and a mammal. Table 1. Guinness records held by animal migrants Smallest migrant Bar-headed goose (Anser indicus) Source: Hoare 2009, Egevang et al. 2010 Figure 1: Bar-tailed Godwit feeding on a bivalve on northward migration at Yalu Jiang River, Yellow Sea, China © 2010 Nature Education Courtesy of Phil Battley. All rights reserved. One of the longest non-stop flights is performed by the bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica) (Figure 1). The L. l. baueri subspecies breeds in Alaska and migrates south to its non-breeding quarters in Australia and New Zealand. Tracking individuals using lightweight satellite tags revealed that these birds are able to cross the Pacific Ocean in a non-stop marathon flight lasting over 9 days, making it one of the most impressive feats among migratory animals (Figure 2; Gill et al. 2009). Perhaps the best-known insect migrant is the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) (Figure 3a).

At the end of every summer, more than 100 million individuals sweep across North America to overwinter up to 4,750 km further south in California and Mexico. The complete migration requires an intergenerational relay. No single individual makes the entire round trip, as the duration of these journeys exceeds their lifespan. Instead, the females lay eggs during the migration, from which the next generation of migrants emerges. Monarchs specialize on milkweeds (Asclepiadaceae), which contain substances that are poisonous to vertebrates and thus protect the monarch from many potential enemies (Dingle 1996). Figure 2: Flight tracks of nine bar-tailed godwits on southward migration equipped with satellite transmitters One female flew directly from Alaska to the non-breeding grounds in New Zealand on a 11,680 km non-stop journey across the Pacific Ocean, which lasted over 8 days (Gill et al. 2009). © 2010 Nature Education Courtesy of US Geological Survey. All rights reserved.

The common name of the southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) (Figure 3b) refers to the fact that they were considered the ‘right’ whale to hunt. They are slow-moving and have large amounts of blubber, which meant that they floated after being killed. Many tens of thousands were slaughtered until the international whaling ban in 1935. Southern right whales migrate from their Antarctic feeding areas to temperate breeding areas along the costs of Chile and Argentina, southern Africa, and Australia and New Zealand, covering 2,500 km each way. Their migration is fuelled entirely by fat accumulated during their four-month stay in the icy Southern Ocean around Antarctica, where they skim the surface waters for zooplankton. Amazingly, they will not feed until their return a year later (Hoare 2009). Figure 3: (A) Overwintering monarch butterflies gather at such high densities that the branches of their trees bend with their weight. (B) When the Southern right whales arrive on their feeding grounds around Antarctica in December they are often near starvation. But they are able to double their body weight after a short stay in the food-rich polar seas.

© 2010 Nature Education 3A courtesy of Raina Kumra; 3B courtesy of Courtesy of Michael Catanzariti. All rights reserved. Why Migrate? Migration is an adaptive response to the seasonal or geographic variation of resources (Gauthreaux 1982). The annual cycle of the seasons produces large differences in the duration and intensity of solar energy received in each hemisphere at any given time. Many migrants take advantage of favorable food and weather conditions offered in certain areas during very limited time periods. For instance, migratory birds like the bar-tailed godwit that breed at high latitudes (e.g., in the arctic tundra) exploit the extraordinary abundance of food during a few weeks in early summer and profit from long days, which allow them to extend foraging time. By leaving these areas after breeding, they avoid the northern winters with short days, low temperatures, and low food availability (Pulido 2007). In other cases, the resources needed in different life stages may be found in different locations.

For example, young salmon migrate to sea to take advantage of the great abundance of food and high growth potential available there, but must someday return upstream to the small rocky tributaries required for spawning, a trip sometimes involving thousands of kilometres (Figure 4; Dingle 1996). Figure 5: Migrating kokanee salmon Oncorhynchus nerka in Meadow Creek, British Columbia, Canada © 2010 Nature Education Courtesy of Margaret A. Warren. All rights reserved. Preparing for Migration Some migratory animals forage along their migratory routes, while others, such as the bar-tailed godwit crossing the Pacific Ocean, do not. Most migrants therefore feed intensively prior to departing for their journey to boost their fuel stores. This behaviour is known as hyperphagia, which is triggered by an internal circannual rhythm, and is seen in species as varied as monarch butterflies, caribou, and baleen whales. The main source of energy used for migration is fat. Fat stores about 8–10 times more energy than the equivalent mass of either carbohydrate or protein, making fat the fuel of choice (Jenni & Jenni-Eiermann 1998).

Migrants are capable of storing and mobilizing large amounts of fat: birds that fly long distances can double their body weight prior to departure, and a monarch butterfly can store up to 125% of its lean dry weight as fat (Dingle 1996; Brower et al. 2006). Accumulating energetic reserves is not the only physiological change taking place. As migration is energetically expensive, some migrants minimize excess weight and maximize flight efficiency by adjusting the size of their internal organs. In some avian migrants, organs related to flight, such as heart and flight muscles, increase in size in preparation for migration (Piersma 1998; Ramenofsky & Wingfield 2007). By contrast, organs related to feeding (e.g., stomach, gut, liver, and kidneys) become smaller before departure and return to normal size upon arrival, when feeding and digestion resume (Piersma & Gill 1998). Similar changes are observed in some insects: for example, monarch butterflies migrating south through North America in the autumn have no sexual organs — these only develop the following spring in the surviving individuals (Brower et al. 2006).

Navigation During Migration Visible Cues The most obvious cues used by migrants to find their way are visible cues such as local topography. Some species, including birds, insects and crabs, are able to make use of polarized light patterns, which are formed when light is scattered by airborne particles. As the sun’s position shifts throughout the day, the pattern of polarized light in the sky changes, allowing these species to find their way on cloudy days when the sun is not visible. When travelling at night, some migrants use the position of the stars based on the rotation of the night sky about a fixed point. In the northern hemisphere, this point is the Pole Star. Invisible Cue Other cues used for orientation are invisible, such as olfactory and magnetic cues. Salmon migrating in the open ocean can find the mouth of their natal river by constantly sampling the seawater for changing concentrations of mineral salts. Magnetic cues are used by a broad range of species, including birds, butterflies, salamanders, lobsters, bats, whales, turtles, and sharks. The Earth, which behaves like a giant magnet, has a doughnut-shaped magnetic field, made up of elliptical force lines running between the magnetic north and south poles.

Depending on the species, the magnetic compasses used by animals detect the changing angle of the magnetic force lines, the north-south polarity, or even the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field. What Triggers Migration? In birds, there is a clear association between day length and the onset of migration. Dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) and American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) kept in artificially lengthened light periods move north when released, while controls, kept under natural light conditions, move south (Dingle 1996). Hormones are also known to play a role in controlling migration. Bird migration is thought to depend on gonadal condition in spring, but not in fall. In many insects, changes in the activity of juvenile hormone are responsible for transitions between migratory and reproductive life stages, and the gregarious swarms of locusts are under the influence of the hormone serotonin. The connections between day length, annual reproductive cycle and migration are now well established in birds, fishes, and other migrants. Taking Advantage of Outside Help with Migration Many ocean currents follow definite and reliable routes, and marine migrants often taken advantage of them.

In summer, leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) pick up the warm Gulf Stream to glide across the North Atlantic to the coasts of northwest Europe. Likewise, throughout the tropics, the movements of manta rays (Manta birostris) and whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) show a clear correlation with warm currents. The larvae of countless pelagic fish, molluscs, and crustaceans rely on currents to drift away from their spawning areas. For aerial migrants, ideal migration conditions are a sustained tailwind, a cloudless sky and low temperatures. Cool air prevents hard-working pectoral muscles from overheating, which is one of the reasons why some birds migrate at night, particularly when crossing deserts, where the extreme heat at midday could be fatal. Human History of Animal Migration The earliest evidence of humans being aware of animal migration dates back to the Stone Age. Some rock art images, portraying animals moving across the African savannah, are as old as 20,000 years. They were produced by nomadic hunter-gatherers, and could have served as a field guide to potential food, or as a visual record of good hunting areas.

The philosophers of Ancient Greece were the first to develop a theory of migratory behaviour in animals, even though their conclusions nowadays seem rather fanciful. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) realized that a number of birds were migratory, and his creative explanation for the sudden disappearance of summer migrants, such as warblers and swallows, was that they had morphed into different species present in winter. His idea of transmutation persisted well into the Middle Ages in Europe. According to another theory, which was still widely believed in the 1800s, migratory birds disappeared into the mud at the bottom of ponds and lakes where they would spend the winter. Since then, our understanding of migration has indeed improved. How Migration Is Studied Bird Banding Instrumental in studying migration were banding (also called ringing) studies. Banding dates back to 1899, when Danish teacher Hans Christian Mortensen visited European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) nests and gave each nestling an aluminum leg band engraved with a return address and a unique serial number. If anyone encountered one of his banded birds, they could send back information on the time and place where it was found.

Since 1899, more than 200 million birds are estimated to have been banded worldwide, of which only a fraction have been recovered. However, even a recovery rate as low as 1 in 300 — the average for small birds — still provides valuable insights into the routes that migrants take. Alternatives to banding include labeling with dye and attaching plastic tags to the neck or back, which is also used for mammals (Hoare 2009). Radar The rapid development of radar during the Second World War enabled actual migratory journeys to be plotted for the first time. Modern radar is powerful enough to pinpoint the height, speed, and wing beat rate of individual birds and bats. Its aquatic equivalent — sonar — can detect shoals of fish moving underwater. Tracking Devices It is possible to study animal movements without directly observing an individual. Fitting animals with radio transmitters and using hand-held or stationary antennas allows following their whereabouts within a range of several kilometers. Alternatively, satellite transmitters beam signals to orbiting satellites, which then relay the data back to computers on the ground. GPS tags use the satellites of the Global Positioning System to record data such as location and time.

They can be attached to mammals with a neck collar or to medium-sized birds with a backpack. Even smaller are geolocators, which are miniature light level loggers that can record sunset and sunrise, from which the location of the individual can be reconstructed. Some weigh less than 1 g and can last for many years. However, they need to be retrieved to access the data they store. Stable Isotopes It is now possible to measure the amount of stable isotopes such as deuterium (a form of hydrogen), oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in the tissue of migrants. Isotope levels in the plumage of a migratory bird match that of the vegetation of its breeding ground and can therefore serve as an indication of its place of birth (Hobson 2005). The same technique has been used to establish the hatching place of individual monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico. Summary Animal migration involves travelling from one type of habitat to another, which is often linked to the cycle of the seasons. Preparing for the migratory journey, which poses extreme energetic demands on the animal, usually involves a number of physiological changes, such as storing large amounts of fat and reducing the size of the organs that are not needed during migration.

Migrants use a variety of cues to find their way, such as the magnetic field of the earth, changing concentration of minerals in the ocean water or polarized light. The breath-taking nature and raw beauty of animal migration has inspired humans for the past 20,000 years and continues to do so to this day. Acknowledgments Sr. Eva Hooker reads from newly published poetry book // The Observer Kathryn Marshall | Friday, February 5, 2016 There’s a winged godwit walking along a lake shore on the cover of Sr. Eva Mary Hooker’s newly published book of poetry. Hooker performed a reading of “Godwit,” which was released this month, in Rice Commons on Thursday night. Hooker, a 1963 graduate of the College and faculty member of the English department, spoke about her experiences with the book’s namesake bird. “My first encounter with godwits was at Crane Beach and Plum Island, both in Massachusetts,” Hooker said. “My next encounter was in the prairie grasslands of Minnesota.

Godwits with wet feet, godwits making themselves fat for the long flight from Minnesota to South America by way of the Atlantic coast.” Hooker said the bird’s name comes from the old English word meaning good creature and that the name itself is also a glorious pun. The godwit is famous today for its long migration, with the bar-tailed godwit making an unbroken 7,257 mile flight from Alaska to New Zealand by way of China each year, she said. The first section of the book is called “Godsalt,” in reference to a metaphor used by Cormac McCarthy in his novel “The Road,” she said. “I want to move that possession of salt, which is in the deep of God, into the possession of the soul as what I call inflorescence blooming of the soul,” Hooker said. A poem titled “Solomon’s Seal” is named after a protected flower Hooker came upon behind Riedinger House on Saint Mary’s campus one day, she said. The white space of the printed poems is used for a variety of purposes and, in this case, is used “to imagine the touch of the spirit,” she said.

“The middle section [of the book] is called ‘Dark is the shadow of me,’ which is a sequence of poems which explore dark as shadow, a place where soul is a verb, not a noun,” Hooker said. “… In the heart of the sequence, soul is a place of danger.” The third part of the publication is “There is work to do within nothingness,” she said, and one poem in the section shares that title. “At last the day has come when I have a book in my hands that I made,” she said. “Carl Phillips writes that a lyric poem is always, at some level, a testimony at once for a love of the world we must lose, and to the fact of loss itself — and how in that tension between love and loss that the poem enacts there is a particular resinous that he calls mercy. … “… In Godwit, that was my being,” she said. “Mercy as a kind of respite, a geography of heightened consciousness that is within us, as if bodily shaken.” Junior Leah Alday attended the poetry reading and said she appreciated the references Hooker made to outside literary influences.

“I really enjoyed that she had a lot of Hildegard references, because not many people I know talk about her,” Alday said. “I learned about her in Germany, so hearing about her in Sr. Eva’s poetry was really beautiful.” Hooker is also the author of “The Winter Keeper” and “Notes for Survival in the Wilderness.” Her poems have been published in journals such as Barrow Street, Cincinnati review, Drunken Boat and many others, assistant professor of English and creative writing Dionne Bremyer said. The reading was part of the spring season’s visiting writer series at the College, sponsored by the English department.

Question: What type of creature is a godwit?
Answer: Bird