EDITORIAL: Tiny godwit fires flights of fancy | Hawkes Bay News | Local News in Hawkes Bay

Louis Pierard

Like star gazing, studying the bar tailed godwit allows us above the mundane to contemplate life's mysteries.

Each year, that small bird flies to Alaska from New Zealand and back. While the attractions for its southern journey might seem obvious, how does it manage to travel, with such unerring precision, from its nest on the Alaskan tundra to spend a southern summer in the Firth of Thames, Kaipara and Manukau harbours or Farewell Spit, before heading back to breed in March?

Maybe it navigates by the stars. Or it is guided by earth's magnetic field. How do its young manage to follow the same path long after their parents have departed?

Not to be outdone, human invention is hoping to solve the mystery. We still cannot tell what pulls the birds back and forth over the planet but with the aid of micro-electronics that allow the godwit's passage to be monitored by satellite we can fix a more accurate route map of its journey. It brings an understanding which, if anything, increases our sense of wonderment at this extraordinary bird.

E7 has landed. That female godwit, a mere speck in a cloud of long distance travellers, has the distinction of being the first godwit whose entire migration has been tracked with the help of a transmitter implanted in February.

Massey University ecologist Phil Battley says E7 broke her own record for the longest flight of 16 tagged birds on the journey north to breed. In a round journey of nearly 30,000km she flew to Yukon, Alaska to breed, with a five- week refuelling stopover in China, breaking her own record on the direct flight back to Thames at the weekend. At more than 11,500km the six-day southern migration of the godwit is thought to be the longest non-stop flight of any bird.

The study of that admirable bird is essential. First, because it is endangered. Over millennia the rich mudflats of predator-free New Zealand has offered an abundant sanctuary. Human habitation, with its cats, dogs and stoats, has taken its toll. We need to understand the bird to ensure it survives.

Second, if we unravel the secret that not only sends and guides the godwit back and forth but also sustains it on its epic flight, it may be to our own benefit: We may have much more to learn from the birds than flight technology.

And last, the study of the godwit gives wing to the imagination. The contemplation of the unknown or unknowable (part of us may wish the bird's magic is never revealed) is a necessary antidote to earthbound life. That we are able to be confounded, humbled and inspired by a tiny bird that can do so much that we can't, is worth appreciating for itself.