Bar-Tailed Godwit (Kuaka)
Our Bar-tailed godwit is one of our most wonderful migratory birds – 70,000 fly to Alaska and then back to New Zealand every year!
They are record breakers all right. They fly non-stop for 11,500 kms from Alaska to New Zealand in eight days. Imagine that!
We've known for decades that our godwits ended up in Alaska, but we didn't know anything about their incredible journey.
It was only once we placed GPS trackers on them that we discovered they were marathon flying machines!
Legend has it that the bar-tailed godwit helped guide Maori to New Zealand’s shores because the godwit always flew south towards New Zealand.
Our bar-tailed godwits fly to various harbours around the country. Most can be found on mudflats from Farewell spit to the Kaipara Harbour, but smaller numbers travel as far south as Bluff.
The birds are very hungry when they arrive in early summer and they spend the next few months gorging on worms and shellfish here gorging on the worms and molluscs.
By the time they leave they will be very fat, this is because they need plenty of 'fuel' to take them on their long journey back to Alaska. Their guts will have shrunk and 55% of their weight will be fat. They are so fat some people have described them as “flying bricks”!
On their flight north , they need to stop off at tidal mud flats in China and South Korea.
More and more of these mudflats have been filled in for farmland or industry. This means some godwits won’t be able to rest and feed and they will die. That is why godwit numbers are falling. Oh no!
