I was chatting with my buddy Lucas. Lucas is gifted at quickly finding arcane information. Not just gifted...divinely gifted.
While arguing about minor issues to pass the time, I asked "How far can a duck migrate in a day?"
My guess was about 350 miles.
Lucas pushed a few buttons and then showed me this.
Make your guess and then check below the break.
Link to image of the duck's path.
She was sitting on a puddle in eastern Russia when she got the urge to fly back to her home continent. With the wind at her back, she took off at approximately 10:30 p.m. and was soaring over the Bering Sea by midnight. Reaching ground speeds of up to 150 miles per hour, the hen stayed airborne over southeast Alaska and the North Pacific. Twenty-five hours and roughly 2,000 miles later, the duck finally touched down in a wetland somewhere in northern California.
“It’s unbelievable,” says Paul Link, a lead waterfowl researcher with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. “It’s the first bird I’ve ever seen do this.
Ahhh, but what is the velocity of an unladen Swallow?
ReplyDeleteYou HAD to know this was coming.....right?
African or Illini?
DeleteWow !! I was way low, guessing 700 miles.
ReplyDeleteMy Brother used to race homig pigeons, the longest distance 600 miles away from the Dallas airport. The birds were released at dawn and would show up very nearly at dusk at the loft trap, the same day. About 14 hours, more or less.
That's going frm west to east. Lots of winds to help you along.
ReplyDeleteGoing the other way is a slow process.
The original question popped up when we were talking about some plants' ability to survive temperatures far lower than those experienced where the seed was collected.
DeleteThe crux of the question was: Can a duck swallow a seed in eastern Iowa and shit that same seed in Louisiana? If that seed grows, then its seedlings and the seeds it pollinated are likely to have a great deal more resistance to cold than one would expect.
More generically, seeds that are spread by birds are likely to have more genetic plasticity north/south than seeds which are wind pollinated/dispersed which will have more genetic plasticity in the direction of the prevailing wind.
Waterfowl are also responsible for a lot of unwanted types of fish winding up in managed lakes.
ReplyDeleteWhat was even more amazing to me than the fact that this bird went from Siberia to Nothern California in a day, was that this duck was not the only one to travel from Louisiana to Russia and return. If you search the web there are several articles on the results of this ongoing pintail study; here is the one I think ERJ pulled the graphic from- https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/pintail-duck-migrate-russia-louisiana/ Amazing stuff!
ReplyDeleteMore than 24 hours and less than 2000 miles. Math is hard for biology majors, we round off a lot.
ReplyDelete