Inverclyde Now Logo NATURE — Is It A Bird Or A Plane? One Shorebird’s Amazing Migration

28 October, 2020 | Local

The track at Lunderston Bay is a good vantage point for spotting shorebirds. Picture: David Carnduff

INVERCLYDE’S coastline is home to a good selection of shorebirds in winter, with two locations — Cardwell Bay and Lunderston Bay — among the best spots to view them, writes David Carnduff.

Oystercatchers, redshanks, ringed plovers, curlews, dunlins and turnstones can be seen at both locations without too much difficulty, and Cardwell Bay is also earning a reputation for attracting a good selection of gulls, especially less common types.

There’s a misconception that shorebirds are difficult to identify, but it’s only the smaller ones such as the dunlin that can be tricky.

Some migrate phenomenol distances to their breeding grounds in the Arctic and it’s intriguing to think that a turnstone wintering at Cardwell Bay could have hatched as a chick in Greenland just weeks previously.

One sunny morning in September, I was pleased to see another type of shorebird, the strangely-named bar-tailed godwit, on the foreshore at Lunderston.

The bar-tailed godwit has a record-breaking migration. Picture: Pixabay

Unlike the curlew, which has a long, down-curved beak, the godwit’s has a slight up-tilt which it uses deftly to probe for molluscs, worms and aquatic insects in sand or mud.

Although the Clyde area has a wintering population of bar-tails, it’s unusual to see them at Lunderston.

When it comes to long-distance migration, few other birds can rival the godwit which is said to have the aerodynamic build of a “jet fighter”.

One with a small satellite tag fitted to its back was tracked flying more than 12,000km (7,500 miles) from Alaska to New Zealand, setting a new world record for avian non-stop flight.

The godwit set off from south-west Alaska on 16 September and arrived at a bay near Auckland 11 days later, having flown at speeds of up to 55mph across the entire length of the Pacific.

A scientist studying epic migratory journeys said: “The godwits seem to have some capability of knowing where they are on the globe. We can’t really explain it but they seem to have an onboard map.”

And what of the unusual name? There’s a theory that “godwit” is a combination of Anglo Saxon words that mean “good to eat”.

This applies particularly to a related species, the black-tailed godwit, which was considered a delicacy in parts of England, with numerous references to its edibility dating back to the 16th century. Eggs were collected for food and adults were shot, netted or snared.

One account — a bit dubious in my opinion — suggests those caught alive were fattened on bread and milk before being sent to the London markets.

The bar-tailed godwit at Lunderston was joined by another the following day but the pair didn’t stick around. When I looked for them on subsequent days they were gone, presumably having zoomed off to goodness-knows-where in their quest for a desirable spot to spend their “winter holidays”.

With their turbo-charged wings and on-board map, the world is surely their oyster.


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