Tiny songbird completes long-haul flight without stopping for a rest

A diminutive songbird weighing the about the same as a HK$10 coin can fly over the north Atlantic non-stop, scientists said on Tuesday, resolving a 50-year mystery.

The tiny superbird is the blackpoll warbler ( ), they reported in the journal .

Tipping the scale at a mere 12 grams, the white-throated, black-capped bird migrates south each autumn from New England to South America.

For half a century, scientists have debated whether the birds fly non-stop over the ocean or take breaks on land to carry out this marathon flight.

Tiny backpack flight recorders, attached to 40 of the birds, have now provided "irrefutable evidence" that they do it all in one go, the scientists said.

The geolocators, weighing only 0.5 grams, found that the birds completed an astonishing non-stop flight of between 2,270km and 2,770km.

This was the distance from their summer homes in Vermont and Nova Scotia to Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Greater Antilles islands, where they made landfall before continuing to northern Venezuela and Colombia.

Albatrosses, sandpipers and gulls are famous for their ultra-long flights - but they have broad, long wings and can settle on water if they get tired or blown off course. For a tiny forest bird with a 20cm wingspan, which would drown if it touched the sea, such a feat is a wonder, the researchers said.

"For small songbirds, we are only just now beginning to understand the migratory routes that connect temperate breeding grounds to tropical wintering areas," said Bill DeLuca at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

"We're really excited to report that this is one of the longest non-stop overwater flights ever recorded for a songbird, and finally confirms what has long been believed to be one of the most extraordinary migratory feats on the planet."

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Tiny songbird can fly the Atlantic non-stop

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