Imagine a bird no bigger than a Tim Tam making a round trip of 20,000km between Moreton Bay and Alaska. Every year!
It can’t swim or even float, so it can never land on the thousands of kilometres of ocean it’s flying over.
And, it locates the same nesting site in the Alaskan Wilderness every year after flying across the globe.
And if that’s not enough, the adult birds depart Alaska leaving the chicks to migrate to our shores without ever having done it before and with no adult supervision!
Incredibly, despite their demanding lifestyle, many migratory shorebirds are long lived. By the time a shorebird is 15 years old, they will have flown the equivalent distance to the moon – that’s 384,400 kilometres.
You may well ask, how do they do it?
How Do They Do It?
To be physically able, they double their body weight before they migrate. That’s a lot of nonstop feasting on worms, shellfish and crabs on the tidal flats of Moreton Bay.
When it comes to the problem of rest and sleep, one of the coolest things they do is ‘shut-down’ parts of their brain for a rest while they continue to fly.
How on earth do these birds pinpoint their destinations when they’re flying 10,000kms? They have an inbuilt “compass” tuned into the earth’s magnetic field, an ability to navigate by the stars and the sun and acute senses of smell and visual memory.
So, these are amazing critters sharing our Sandgate shores, but they need our help. The best thing we can do is keep our dogs on the leash or only in the off leash area.
Look out for the Boondall Environment Centre and KSBA Shorebird displays on the Sandgate foreshore in the coming months.
For more information see the Queensland Waders Study group website.
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