It’s Olympics time and this set me wondering about the extraordinary feats of our wild birds. Who flies the furthest, longest or highest? Who is the heaviest or has the longest wingspan? Or more subjectively which bird is the gaudiest or most beautiful? Whose song is the purest or loudest? Which bird is the tastiest? Clearly French President Mitterand knew the answer to the latter as his dying wish to eat a dish of Ortolan buntings was reportedly granted – despite the birds being legally protected!
Migration throws up all sorts of surprises. I remember as a school boy I saw a dainty Pallas’s warbler in a small wood on Beachy Head. A tiny leaf warbler less than 4” in length with a lemon rump, wing bars and a flashy head pattern. It seemed so exotic and the thought it should have been wintering in the foothills of the Himalaya’s and the forests of Northern Thailand just seemed so amazing to me those 40 years ago – just as it does today.
Modern technology in the form of GPS satellite tags is revolutionising our ideas about the distances and speeds birds travel. The great albatrosses are now known to circumnavigate the Southern Oceans – effortlessly riding the storms of the roaring 40’s. From such data we have discovered a bar-tailed godwit has flown from Alaska over 11,000km non-stop across the Pacific to land in its wintering quarters on North Island, New Zealand. This must rank as one of the most phenomenal journeys regularly undertaken by any living creature and the energy reserves needed to sustain days of continuous flight over the Ocean sees the birds weight drop substantially in the process. How do they do it! It must be like one of those sequences in a wartime film as the needle on the aircrafts fuel tank sits on zero. You can see bar-tailed godwits on British estuaries in the Autumn and Winter. Some certainly pass south to West Africa – and I have seen them on coastal lagoons in Namibia – so these are immense travellers.
Wandering albatross by David Tipling
The Arctic Tern is also a prodigious migrant. It nests around Scotland and as far North as Northern Norway. Arctic terns winter around South Africa and some venture even further South to the edge of the Antarctic ice shelf. They are long lived birds, so they may make the round trip twenty or more times in their busy life times. Researchers estimate that with stops for feeding they fly at least 70,000km each year!
It is the mysteries of birds, their ability to travel seemingly at will, such vast distances that fascinates us, and in times past we set our yearly clocks by them. The arrival of swallows or storks in Europe greeted Springtime. The calling Turtle dove mentioned in the Bible heralded a time of plenty, as the sound of the “turtle” was heard in the land. Geese migrating from the Arctic to our shores always excites me – the first pink-feet over my Edinburgh home in mid September tells me winter is coming.
There are lots of other record-breaking species. The world’s heaviest flying bird is the great bustard-a fully grown male tipping the scales at 40lbs.
Great bustard by Gordon Langsbury
The worlds fastest (in level flight) is thought to be the needle-tailed swift at 105mph, but a diving peregrine falcon clocks speeds of some 200mph.
The biggest eagle is the Philippine eagle, but the Stellers sea-eagle is heavier and the Harpy eagle pushes both close. I have seen Harpy eagles in Brazil-and would love to see the other two. The Philippine eagle is teetering on the edge of extinction though and a trip to Japan in winter is needed to see a Stellers.
The most common sea bird is the Wilsons petrel. And, the bird with the biggest wingspan is the Wandering albatross which can sport wings up to 3.7m(12ft 2”)! What other champions can you name?
You can get hung up on these statistics – and birds are just such a joy that does it matter if your favourite is not a podium winner? What matters is that people care about conserving them, something I have done from my earliest memory.