Rising Tide Images
Splish Splash
This male kōlea in breeding plumage takes a bath before the long flight from the tropics to the nesting grounds on the Alaskan tundra. The next day, he somehow sensed it was time to congregate with other previously solitary kōlea and departed 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.
Splish Splash
This male kōlea in breeding plumage takes a bath before the long flight from the tropics to the nesting grounds on the Alaskan tundra. The next day, he somehow sensed it was time to congregate with other previously solitary kōlea and departed 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.