Futility Closet

Frequent Flyer

Posted in Oddities, Science & Math by Greg Ross on June 17th, 2009

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P_puffinus_griseus.jpg

In 1957 ornithologists marked a Manx shearwater, a migrating seabird, on Bardsey Island off Wales.

In April 2002 they discovered the same bird was still alive and still gamely flying to South America each winter.

In the intervening 45 years, they calculated, it had covered 5 million miles.

See also Longest Migration.