Endangered Frigate Bird Goes to New Lengths
A Christmas Island frigate bird named Lydia recently made a nonstop journey of just over 26 days and covering nearly 2,500 miles -- across Indonesian volcanoes and some of Asia’s busiest shipping lanes -- in search of food for her baby.
The trip, tracked with a global positioning device by scientists at Christmas Island National Park on Australia’s Indian Ocean territory, is by far the longest known nonstop journey by one of these critically endangered seabirds.
Previously, the black-and-white scavengers with distinctive pink beaks and wingspans of up to 8 feet were known to fly only a few hundred miles.
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