Jul 4,
2019
HARLEYVILLE
— Longshot the warbler is likely long gone. But the tiny yellow flash of a bird
left a legacy that spans a globe.
The prothonotary
warbler in the Audubon Sanctuary at Beidler Forest near Harleyville was
outfitted with a geolocator chip in 2014 after staff noticed the migratory bird
had returned to the sanctuary boardwalk within 15 feet of where it departed the
summer before.
Longshot
came back again the next year, with the trip-logging chip still attached and
against stunning odds.
It had
flown through Florida, Cuba, Central America, down the Pacific coast of
Colombia and back to Four Holes Swamp — an odyssey of 4,000 miles.
Data from
Longshot and 29 other warblers tagged in six states has been incorporated in a
newly published multi-institution study. The study found nearly all of the
wetlands birds wintered in a relatively small area of coastal mangrove and
inland forests in northern Colombia — an area that is heavily logged.
The
discovery was unexpected and alarming.
The
prothonotary warbler, with its deep yellow head and chest, is the eye-catching
songbird of the Southeast bottomlands. It’s a personable native bird — not as
apt to fly off as other species and seeming to be almost curious as humans approach.
Like a
lot of songbird species, it’s in a long-term decline, one of a number of
species that conservationists have begun tracking by geolocators to get a fix
on the environs where they migrate in order to work with groups in those
countries to protect habitats along the entire range.
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