Sharon Davis, age 12, of Hudson, New York, for her question:
Which bird holds the long distance migration record?
There are several champs who migrate perhaps 14,000 to 16,000 miles each year and one super champ whose yearly tour may be 24,000 miles. In summer, one of the champs nests in your neighborhood, in northern New York. He is the pretty, sweet singing bobolink. Come September, he sets off for the summery pampas far south of the equator, some of his species migrate 7,000 miles. Come spring, they migrate another 7,000 miles back.
Many migrators are birds that live on land or by inland waters. Most of them travel by fairly direct routes, via popular flyways. The long distance super champ is the Arctic tern. He is a sea bird who can dive for his dinner and sit to rest like a duck on the water. He travels over the ocean. Actually he may take one of several tours and detours between the Arctic and the Antarctic.
The super champ resembles a smallish sea gull with dainty pointed wings and a forked swallow tail. His pale, pearly grey plumage is set off with a neat little black cap and a pinkish bill. Various members of his species nest around the Arctic sea and in northern Greenland.
At summers end, if he nests in northeastern Alaska, he travels leisurely southward along the coastline of North America, then South America. He may continue on to the very shores of Antarctica.
If he nests toward the northeast, he flies southward over the sea between Greenland and North America. Some of his kinfolk veer eastward across the Atlantic, brush by Iceland and swerve around Ireland or England, continuing south along the western coast of Europe` and Africa. Some winter around the shores of southern Africa. Some winter on islands in the mid South Atlantic.
Sometimes he goes even further. After flying all the way along the coast of Africa, past the Cape of Good Hope, he continues on across the icy ocean to the shores of the Antarctic continent. Chances are, he arrives there for Christmas, just in time to turn around and start the long ocean tour back to his summer nesting grounds in the Arctic.
If he continues on to the southern limit of his range, the Arctic tern may migrate a distance of 12,000 miles. This means that the dainty little bird flies 24,000 miles there and back every year. So far as we know, this is the long distance migration record in the entire bird world.
Most likely the runner up is the golden plover, who is a more precise navigator. This graceful bird nests in the northern tundra and winters in Argentina. Come fall, he joins flocks of migrating birds and takes the popular Atlantic Flyway as far as Newfoundland. From there he flies southward over the sea to South America and continues over land to the southern pampas. Come spring, he returns by an alternate overland route, via the Central Flyway along the Mississippi Valley. There and back, the golden plover may migrate a yearly distance of 16,000 miles.