On track

The Bar-tailed Godwit is re-nowned for having one of the most extreme migrations, flying non-stop from Alaska to winter in New Zealand.

- By Peter Ryan

The Bar-tailed Godwit is re-nowned for having one of the most extreme migrations, flying non-stop from Alaska to winter in New Zealand. But this only applies to the easternmost subspecies, Limosa lapponica baueri, which breeds in Alaska. Four other subspecies are recognised, which breed in the Old World, from northern Scandinavia to the Bering Sea. They winter from western Europe to Australia and their migrations are less extreme because they have options to forage at staging sites along the routes.

The population that winters in Africa and the Middle East usually is recognised as L. l. taymyrensis, which breeds in the tundra of central Siberia from the southern end of the Yamal Peninsula to the Anabar River, east of the Taymyr Peninsula. A new tracking study by Roeland Bom and colleagues in