Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Home
Today's Show: What's Inside a Woodpecker's Nest Hole?
Pileated Woodpecker nest with parent and chicks
Listen In
  • Today's Show
  • Listen
    • Daily Shows
    • Threatened
    • Grouse
    • BirdNote Presents
    • How to Listen
  • Explore
    • Field Notes
    • Sights & Sounds
    • Birdwatching
    • Resources for Educators
  • How to Help Birds
    • At Home
    • In Your Community
    • Success Stories
  • About
    • The BirdNote Story
    • The Team
    • Partners
    • For Radio Stations
    • Funding
    • Contact Us
    • FAQs
    • Support BirdNote
  • Donate

Bar-tailed Godwits - With David Melville

A huge migration loop!
Subscribe to the Podcast
Download
  • Share This:
  • Share to Facebook
  • Share to Twitter
  • Share to Email
Bar-tailed Godwit
© Leo Berzins

In our autumn, Bar-tailed Godwits fly non-stop for nine days across the Pacific, to reach New Zealand from Alaska. Each spring, the birds make the trip north to breed. But this time, they stop before they reach Alaska, to refuel on the shores of northeast China and the Korean peninsula. Ornithologist David Melville of New Zealand says: "It's really important that China and North and South Korea, recognize the international responsibility that they carry to continue to provide habitat for these birds."

  • Full Transcript
  • Credits
BirdNote®
Bar-tailed Godwits in Spring

Interview of David Melville by Chris Peterson

This is BirdNote.
[Calls of several Bar-tailed Godwits]
In our autumn, Bar-tailed Godwits fly non-stop for nine days across the Pacific, to reach New Zealand from Alaska. Each spring, these shorebirds make the trip north to breed, but this time they refuel on the shores of northeast China and the Korean peninsula. We called ornithologist David Melville in New Zealand, to learn more: 
T8 : 2 The first Bar-tailed Godwits leave NZ about the second week of March and it’s going to take them about 8 days to fly the ten and a half thousand kilometers up to the Yellow Sea. Again this is a non-stop flight… Once they get up to the Yellow Sea, [the sea ice is now melted and] there’s a fantastic amount of food out on the mudflats… And this is really important for the birds to be able to stock up, [build up their body reserves], before the six-thousand-kilometer flight across to Alaska.
T10 :40 It’s an absolutely extraordinary achievement for a bird to be able to do and I think it’s incredibly humbling for us as humans to think what nature’s capable of.
T17 :17 ….  The real crunch point for these birds undoubtedly is the Yellow Sea. ……It’s really important that China, North and South Korea, recognize the international responsibility that they carry to continue to provide habitat for these birds, whilst undoubtedly needing to allow for economic development of their own countries.  

Economic development and vital foraging grounds – is it possible to have both?

T17 :60  I think so. …I’m sure that where there’s a will there’s a way. It’s certainly not easy…but we just have to keep on trying…
.

Learn more and see photos on our website, birdnote.org.
###
Sounds of Bar-tailed Godwit provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Calls recorded by G.A.Keller
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2011 Tune In to Nature.org     May 2011   Narrator: Mary McCann

ID#          SotB-BARG-01-2011-05-05

Chris Peterson
Writer
Mary McCann
Narrator
Leo Berzins
Photographer
Support More Shows Like This
Tagsendangered species environmental champion migration migratory challenges New Zealand shorebird State of the Birds South Pacific

Related Resources

Bar-tailed GodwitsLearn more at audubon2.org.

More About These Birds

Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica)

Limosa lapponica

Sights & Sounds

Related Field Notes

July 14, 2015

Kingfisher Perches

By BirdNote Gallery
For better and for worse, humans can have a huge impact on the lives of birds.
April 28, 2015

Champions for Birds

By BirdNote Gallery
CELEBRATING BIRD CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE COUNTRY

Birds connect us with the joy and wonder of nature. By telling vivid, sound-rich stories about birds and the challenges they face, BirdNote inspires listeners to care about the natural world – and take steps to protect it.

Support BirdNote

  • Daily Shows
  • Field Notes
  • BirdNote Presents
  • Sights & Sounds
  • About BirdNote
  • Contact BirdNote
Sign up for our newsletter!
  • BirdNote on Facebook
  • BirdNote on Twitter
  • BirdNote on Instagram

Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.

  • Privacy Policy