Date: June 1, 2017
Source: University of Faculty of
Science British Columbia
Zoologists have documented the
first record of a House Swift in the Americas -- and begun to unravel the
mystery of how the tiny bird got from its south-east Asia breeding grounds to
Ladner, BC.
The bird's well preserved but
near-emaciated carcass was discovered in May 2012 near the Deltaport container
terminal, just 40 metres from the Pacific Ocean.
"Like some marathon runners,
I think this fellow finally saw land and just crashed, exhausted, at the finish
line," says Ildiko Szabo, a curator at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum and
forensic ornithologist at the University of British Columbia (UBC) who led the
identification of the specimen.
"These birds are amazing
fliers and can stay airborne for months at a time, but there wouldn't have been
enough insect prey to sustain him properly over the mid-Pacific. The mystery is
what sent him so far off course."
In a paper published in The
Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Szabo and co-authors, including UBC researcher
Darren Irwin, propose that either a storm set the bird off course, or even more
likely, his internal navigation 'compass' malfunctioned.
"Our initial reaction was
skepticism that this would be such an unusual species," says Irwin, who
studies how new bird species arise. "But by combining a review of the
bird's characteristics with DNA testing, we were able to confirm that this was
indeed a House Swift from Asia, making this an exceptional case of vagrancy."
No comments:
Post a Comment