Rising Tide Images
Living in a Big World
Like all migratory shorebirds, this kōlea lives in an immense world. Kōlea migrate to Hawaii after a five-month summer breeding season in arctic Alaska. The trip spans approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring an exhaustive 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight. Incredibly, some will continue their marathon semiannual migration to oceanic islands of the southern Pacific resulting in an annual round trip total of about 15,000 miles. Their fledglings set off from the tundra searching for an island and a suitable territory a month or two after the adults have departed. Many first-year birds probably miss landfall and perish at sea. Survivors are superb navigators with territorial fidelity, using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of land every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina.
Living in a Big World
Like all migratory shorebirds, this kōlea lives in an immense world. Kōlea migrate to Hawaii after a five-month summer breeding season in arctic Alaska. The trip spans approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring an exhaustive 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight. Incredibly, some will continue their marathon semiannual migration to oceanic islands of the southern Pacific resulting in an annual round trip total of about 15,000 miles. Their fledglings set off from the tundra searching for an island and a suitable territory a month or two after the adults have departed. Many first-year birds probably miss landfall and perish at sea. Survivors are superb navigators with territorial fidelity, using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of land every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina.