Rising Tide Images
Probing the Sandy Shore
A kōlea combs the shoreline for a meal after a return trip to the tropics from the summer nesting grounds on the Alaskan tundra. It made the journey with a flock of other plovers that disperse to solitary territories after arrival. The trip spans about 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring a rigorous, energy intensive effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight at elevations ranging from 3,000 to 16,000 feet. A superb navigator with territorial fidelity, this Pacific golden plover used the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find its way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of shoreline every year. It may perceive the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in its retina.
Probing the Sandy Shore
A kōlea combs the shoreline for a meal after a return trip to the tropics from the summer nesting grounds on the Alaskan tundra. It made the journey with a flock of other plovers that disperse to solitary territories after arrival. The trip spans about 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring a rigorous, energy intensive effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight at elevations ranging from 3,000 to 16,000 feet. A superb navigator with territorial fidelity, this Pacific golden plover used the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find its way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of shoreline every year. It may perceive the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in its retina.