Grey plover flight of 13,000km from Russia to Adelaide tracked by satellite tag

891 ABC Adelaide 

By Brett Williamson

Satellite tags are being used to plot the course of two grey plovers as they fly 13,000 kilometres back to Adelaide from Russia.

The birds were tagged earlier this year before they took off on their incredible long-haul flight.

The tags showed the pair flew non-stop 7,000km from Adelaide to China before they rested and continued on to Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean.

Tony Flaherty, the manager of coast and marine for Natural Resources Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges, said satellite tags were invaluable research tools.

Every two days they plot the birds' location.

Mr Flaherty said the technology meant researchers could monitor their exact movements.

"[The tags] are very small, solar-powered units," he said.

"[They] come in under one gram [in weight]."

Previously, researchers had relied on bird sightings and made calculated guesses of their travels.

Mr Flaherty said it was incredible to watch the birds read complex weather systems and time their departures with complementary winds.

Continued 

Two grey plover birds tracked leaving Adelaide and flying 13,000 km in three months

June 12, 2016 11:49am

Environment Reporter Jade Gailberger

TWO migratory birds that spent the summer in Adelaide have been tracked to a remote Russian island in the Arctic Circle, having flown 13,000km in three months.

The grey plovers’ journeys from Adelaide’s International Bird Sanctuary are the subject of a migration study and each carries a solar-powered satellite tracking device.

Both birds left Thompson Beach, west of Dublin, in March, but have chosen different paths to Wrangel Island, which is off Russia’s northeast coast.

So remote is the island that it is thought to have been home to the world’s last population of woolly mammoths up until about 4000 years ago.

The Advertiser last reported on the progress of one of the birds, codenamed CYA, in April,

after it had flown northwest, over Australia’s central deserts and then east of Kununurra in Western Australia, before heading out over the Timor, Banda and Molucca Seas near Indonesia.

After flying over the islands in the Philippines, CYA clocked up 7340km on a flight to Taiwan, where the bird spent just under two weeks, before arriving at tidal flats of the Jiangsu coast of the Yellow Sea, near Dongtai city.

Read on …