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Splash Zone Plover

A Pacific golden plover overlooks a tide pool to see what bounty a wave might hurl into the intertidal splash zone. Most kolea I have observed establish territorial fidelity at inland grassy areas. This one earns its classification as a shorebird. A superb navigator, the kolea (Pluvialis fulva) annually migrates from Alaska and to tropical Pacific islands on a high endurance non-stop flight of 3 to 4 days over thousands of miles of featureless open ocean. Using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field (perhaps visually with magnetoreception in cryptochrome molecules in the eye) to precisely find its destination.

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Uploaded on October 6, 2021
Taken on September 23, 2021