If you're looking for inspiration in this time of uncertainty at home and abroad, look no further than to a bird barely bigger than a box of Easter Peeps.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey and a study published in an English journal, "E7," a female bar-tailed godwit, set a record for the longest flight - 7,242 miles from Alaska to New Zealand. Not impressed?
She made the journey of more than eight days without stopping. No breaks for food or rest or other functions of life. Sort of like flying coach these days.
Robert E. Gill Jr. of the USGS led the study of E7 and 22 other bar-tailed godwits, which were tracked by transmitters that beamed their locations to scientists via satellite.
You can visit http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/shorebirds/index.html to see the map of E7's 18,000-mile round-trip flight path. It'll take your breath away.
Not all bar-tailed godwits go nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand. They've been known to stop over in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea before completing their trek. But this is not without risk.
It adds time, uses up energy and makes the birds vulnerable to predators, parasites and disease. Crossing the Pacific nonstop is a matter of survival.
So far it's worked. Scientists say there are an estimated 100,000 godwits and that that number hasn't changed much over the years.
The USGS notes that bar-tailed godwits "become adults at the age of 4 or 5" and can live "beyond 20 years of age.
If 18,000 miles is an average annual flight distance, then an adult godwit would fly some 288,000 miles in a lifetime." Those are some serious frequent-flier miles.
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