taking the PlUnge | 37There is no reason why exploration of new areas should cease after
the bird’s first few months. Børge Moe, from the Norwegian Institute
of Nature Research, told the 2nd World Seabird Conference how young
Black- legged Kittiwakes, tracked with geolocators from their home col-
ony in Kongsfjord, Svalbard, wandered far and wide in the years be-
tween fledging and recruitment to the colony 2–4 years later. For exam-
ple, in their first summer, around one- third of these small gulls with a
wafting flight ventured into northern Baffin Bay, surrounded by Elles-
mere Island and north- east Greenland. After a winter passed in the
grumpy lumpy seas east of Labrador and south of Greenland, where the
adults also winter, the Kittiwakes spent the next summer back closer to
home, at Svalbard. In contrast other immature Kittiwakes used their
first summer to explore east from Svalbard towards the Russian islands
of Novaya Zemlya, a site of much Soviet nuclear testing. Whether these
explorations ever led to the birds settling away from their colony of
birth is not known – but it seems plausible.
If the seasons are changing fast – perhaps equinoctial gales threaten
- an alternative tactic is for the fledgling to depart smartly for the non-
breeding area, possibly thousands of kilometres away. Traditional obser-
vation has left no doubt that these massive journeys, sometimes between
hemispheres, can be impressively rapid. Famously, a young Manx Shear-
water, ringed at a Welsh colony, was found on a Brazilian shore 16 days
after ringing. Since the finder thought it had been dead at least three
days, the 9,600 km journey had been completed at 740 km/day, perhaps
faster. No flying lessons required there! Lockley^11 was correct to won-
der whether the Manx Shearwater “might be a great annihilator of dis-
tances”. And the very direct journey, in the absence of parents, suggests
route choice was genetically determined.
Or take the case of the Short- tailed Shearwater, an extremely abun-
dant breeder and the harvested muttonbird of islands around south- east
Australia, including Tasmania. Immatures leave the breeding grounds
in March, breeders follow in mid- April and fledglings make up the rear-
guard in late April– early May. The trans- equatorial movement north of
perhaps 30 million of these shearwaters is surely one of the world’s great-
est bird migrations, a fluttering avalanche of 20,000 tonnes of sentient