What happens to the chicks when the adult birds migrate?
(Vikas, Chennai, India) A bar-tailed godwit on the Arctic tundra. Godwits’ long, slightly scooped bills evolved for fast, deep stabbing into wet mud in search of buried prey, such as clams. Photo courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service. A: When the young are old enough to fly, for hundreds of bird species (for instance, the Canadian goose) the young-of-the-year accompany the adults as they migrate. But the young of many species, like golden eagles, white-crowned sparrows and swifts, don’t. In fact, most fledglings of shorebirds migrate on their own a few weeks after the adults leave: an incredible feat. The pronounced age-related differential migrations is common among shorebirds, emails biologist Robert Gill of the USGS Science Center in Anchorage, Alaska. Take, for example, the bar-tailed godwit, a wading bird that migrates from the subArctic shores of the Bering Sea to the shores of Australia and New Zealand nonstop 6,800 miles (11 000 km) and back again, six months later. Let’s
