Rising Tide Images
Countdown to Exodus
This male kōlea combing an exposed coastal limestone shelf is only hours from his annual migration from the tropics to the Alaskan tundra. He is looking fat and dapper in his breeding plumage, requisite for success. He will somehow sense the time to congregate with other previously solitary kōlea and depart collectively. The trip spans 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring a rigorous, energy intensive effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight at elevation ranging from 3,000 to 16,000 feet. Superb navigators with territorial fidelity, kōlea, or Pacific golden plovers, 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.
Countdown to Exodus
This male kōlea combing an exposed coastal limestone shelf is only hours from his annual migration from the tropics to the Alaskan tundra. He is looking fat and dapper in his breeding plumage, requisite for success. He will somehow sense the time to congregate with other previously solitary kōlea and depart collectively. The trip spans 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring a rigorous, energy intensive effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight at elevation ranging from 3,000 to 16,000 feet. Superb navigators with territorial fidelity, kōlea, or Pacific golden plovers, 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.