Rising Tide Images
Warm Welcome
A kolea, or Pacific golden plover, enjoys a warming sunrise while billing through the leaf litter after returning to the tropics. Kolea migrate back to Hawaii after a five month breeding season in Alaska. The return trip spans over approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring an exhaustive 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight. A superb navigator with territorial fidelity, kolea use the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of territory every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina. This one winters in Hawaii. Some will continue their migration into the southern hemisphere. Pluvialis fulva, non-breeding plumage.
Warm Welcome
A kolea, or Pacific golden plover, enjoys a warming sunrise while billing through the leaf litter after returning to the tropics. Kolea migrate back to Hawaii after a five month breeding season in Alaska. The return trip spans over approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring an exhaustive 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight. A superb navigator with territorial fidelity, kolea use the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of territory every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina. This one winters in Hawaii. Some will continue their migration into the southern hemisphere. Pluvialis fulva, non-breeding plumage.