Longest non-stop bird flight

What to remember

A juvenile bar-tailed godwit tagged as B6 flew at least 13,560 km without landing, over 11 days and 1 hour, during a migration in 2022.

The bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica) is a large wader with long legs and a long upturned bill, feeding on bristle-worms and shellfish on coastal mudflats and estuaries. It breeds on Arctic coasts and tundra from Scandinavia to Alaska, and winters on temperate and tropical coasts as far as Australia and New Zealand.

Several GPS-tagged birds of the species have flown 12,000 to 13,000 km non-stop over about ten days, at speeds of up to 90 km/h. The subspecies Limosa lapponica baueri crosses the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, the longest known non-stop flight of any bird and the longest journey without pausing to feed of any animal. Its round trip comes to over 29,000 km.