HONG KONG: For decades, it’s been the stuff of birding legend: Each fall, fist-sized songbirds called blackpoll warblers leave the spruce forests of New England and eastern Canada and fly south across the open ocean toward South America.
Now, improbable though it seems, the rumors have been proven true. A research team led by an ecologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst outfitted five birds with tiny geolocator backpacks and found that each completed the incredible journey, flying up to 1,721 miles in one go.
The slight birds, which typically weigh a little more than two quarters, accomplish this seemingly impossible feat by fattening up preflight, in some cases nearly doubling their body weight.
“They really just turn into flying machines,” said William DeLuca, a research fellow at UMass who led the study published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters. “Fuel and wings and a little navigation computer chip in their head.”
Blackpolls are a common North American species, known for the male’s plumage of a black cap and white cheeks. They make a high-pitched “seet-seet-seet” call, and many ornithologists delight in their distinctive, bright yellow legs.
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