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The Tiny Bird That Soared Into The Record Books |
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Sunday, 11 April 2010 |
At first glance, the ruddy turnstone looks barely strong enough to live up to its name let alone to migrate from one end of the world to the other.
It is little bigger than a song thrush and weighs in at somewhat less than a 250g stick of butter but the wading bird has a hard-won reputation as one of nature's greatest migrating animals.
Now a technological breakthrough by scientists at the British Antarctic Survey has at last allowed researchers to track the routes taken by the birds and to see exactly how far and fast they fly. Tiny light-sensitive tracking devices have shown ruddy turnstones can travel more than 16,700 miles (27,000 kilometres) as they migrate from Australia to the Arctic and back again.
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